Degenerate spontaneous parametric down-conversion in nonlinear metasurfaces

Abstract: We propose a simple scheme of degenerate spontaneous parametric down-conversion (SPDC) in nonlinear metasurfaces or photonic crystal slabs with quasi-guided modes. It employs a band crossing between P- and S-polarized quasi-guided mode bands inside the light cone and a selection rule in the conversion efficiency of the SPDC. The efficiency can be evaluated fully classically via the inverse process of noncollinear second-harmonic generation (SHG). As a toy model, we study the SPDC and SHG in a monolayer of noncentrosymmetric spheres and confirm that the scenario works well to enhance the SPDC.