Three-dimensional nonlinear photonic crystal in naturally grown potassium–tantalate–niobate perovskite ferroelectrics

摘要

Since quasi-phase-matching of nonlinear optics was proposed in 1962,nonlinear photonic crystals were rapidly developed by ferroelectric domain inversion induced by electric or light poling.The three-dimensional(3D)periodical rotation of ferroelectric domains may add feasible modulation to the nonlinear coefficients and break the rigid requirements for the incident light and polarization direction in traditional quasi-phase-matching media.However,3D rotating ferroelectric domains are difficult to fabricate by the direct external poling technique.Here,we show a natural potassium-tantalate-niobate(KTN)perovskite nonlinear photonic crystal with spontaneous Rubik’s cube-like domain structures near the Curie temperature of 40℃.The KTN crystal contains 3D ferroelectric polarization distributions corresponding to the reconfigured second-order susceptibilities,which can provide rich reciprocal vectors to compensate for the phase mismatch along an arbitrary direction and polarization of incident light.Bragg diffraction and broadband second-harmonic generation are also presented.This natural nonlinear photonic crystal directly meets the 3D quasi-phase-matching condition without external poling and establishes a promising platform for all-optical nonlinear beam shaping and enables new optoelectronic applications for perovskite ferroelectrics.