Scientists have created a meta-mirror

Scientists from the University of Texas at Austin and the Technical University of Munich, has developed a thin-film metamaterial with a nonlinear optical properties.

In this case, the nonlinearity of the optical properties of the metamaterial shown thousands of times stronger than the non-linearity of conventional materials, which also have similar properties. And as a demonstration of its capabilities in this area, scientists have created a mirror thickness of just 400 nanometers reflects light whose frequency is exactly twice the frequency of the light incident on the surface of the mirror.

It should be noted that the nonlinear mirror kind already established on the basis of conventional materials with nonlinear optical characteristics. But given the intensity of the incident light and the thickness of the mirror structure, mirror on the basis of the nonlinear metamaterial produces about a million times more photons with twice the frequency than the nonlinear mirror of conventional materials.

"Our work opens up a set of new paradigms in the field of nonlinear optics" - says Professor Andrea Alu (Andrea Alu), - «Using a combination of exotic interaction of electromagnetic waves with metamaterials, we can realize a fundamentally new technologies that can be successfully used both in the field of quantum computing and in conventional electronics. "