High-harmonic Generation Enhancement with Graphene Heterostructures

We investigate high-harmonic generation in graphene heterostructures consisting of metallic nanoribbons separated from a graphene sheet by either a few-nanometer layer of aluminum oxide or an atomic monolayer of hexagonal boron nitride. The nanoribbons amplify the near-field at the graphene layer relative to the externally applied pumping, thus allowing us to observe third- and fifth-harmonic generation in the carbon monolayer at modest pump powers in the mid-infrared. We study the dependence of the nonlinear signals on the ribbon width and spacer thickness, as well as pump power and polarization, and demonstrate enhancement factors relative to bare graphene reaching 1600 and 4100 for third- and fifth-harmonic generation, respectively. Our work supports the use of graphene heterostructures to selectively enhance specific nonlinear processes of interest, an essential capability for the design of nanoscale nonlinear devices.