Continuous-wave, high-resolution, ultra-broadband mid-infrared nonlinear spectroscopy with tunable plasmonic nanocavities (2508.12097v1)

Abstract: Vibrational sum- and difference-frequency generation (SFG and DFG) spectroscopy is a technique to probe the nonlinear response of interfaces at mid-infrared wavelengths while detecting the upconverted signal at visible wavelengths. It has recently transitioned from large-area molecular films and colloidal suspensions to nanoscale structures, enabled by dual-resonant plasmonic nanocavities that confine light and matter in the same deep-subwavelength sensing volume. Here, we implement continuous-wave ultra-broadband SFG and DFG spectroscopy from $860$ to $1670~\mathrm{cm}^{-1}$ on a variety of dual-resonant antennas under ambient conditions. The use of a commercial, broadly tunable quantum-cascade laser and the absence of geometric phase-matching requirements speed up and simplify data acquisition. At the same time, simultaneous access to SFG and DFG sidebands permits ratiometric signal analysis, enabling both common-noise rejection and field-normalized characterization of coherent response. The resulting spectra harbour the signatures of coherent interference between the resonant (vibrational) and nonresonant (electronic) contributions to the $\chi^{(2)}$ susceptibility, previously only observed under fs- and ps-pulsed excitation. We demonstrate the versatility and reproducibility of our approach across several molecules that yield distinct resonant and nonresonant mid-infrared responses. Together, these features position our platform as a scalable route toward multiplexed, high-resolution mid-IR sensing and a potential basis for coherent single- or few-molecule vibrational detection at the chip level.