Enhancement of 3rd-harmonics generation during ultrashort pulse diffraction in multi-layer volume-grating

Abstract: Successful phase-matching methods for Third Harmonics Generation (THG) include phase-matching in birefringent crystal and quasi-phase-matching (QPM) in crystal with periodically poled domains. However, these methods are not feasible in some isotropic materials (e.g. fused silica and photosensitive silicate glass). It was known that volume-grating in isotropic materials can independently generate frequency-converted waves. One of disadvantages of single-layer volume-grating is that the brightness of harmonic emission can not be enhanced by increasing the grating thickness. In this paper, a THG device with stratified sub-gratings was designed to enhance THG in isotropic materials: several sub-gratings were arranged parallel, and the grating-figures misalignment between neighboring sub-gratings was pre-fabricated. In terms of extension of interaction length in THG, our multi-layer sub-grating is formally equivalent to the multi-layer periodically poled crystal (e.g. lithium niobate) in conventional QPM approach. According to the calculation results, the N-layer (N >2) can, in principle, generate TH output intensity of N*N times stronger than single-layer volume-grating does, also compared to N times stronger than N-layer without figures-misalignment. The effect of random fabrication error in grating thickness on normalized conversion efficiency was discussed.