Deep-ultraviolet second harmonic generation in a conventional crystal quartz by freeing phase-matching in nonlinear optics

Nonlinear frequency conversion in optics can originate the coherent light at the wavelength where it is hard or unlikely to achieve by directly lasing and is a fundamental topic in science and engineering covering both classical and quantum regions. The critical requirement for efficient nonlinear frequency conversion is phase-matching, a momentum conservation relation between the fundamental and harmonic light. It is dreaming of a technique for compensating the phase-mismatching in universal nonlinear materials and wavelength ranges, since the phase-matching was proposed in 1962. Here, an additional periodic phase (APP) concept was proposed for the phase-matching in nonlinear optics and experimentally demonstrated the APP phase-matched second harmonic generation with a conventional crystal quartz at the wavelength deep to vacuum-ultraviolet 177.3 nm. This study may not only develop a universal way to resuscitate the nonlinear optical materials for efficient nonlinear frequency conversion, but also may revolutionize the nonlinear photonics and their further applications.