Dot patterns from second-harmonic and sum-frequency generation in polycrystalline ZnSe

Abstract

During a comparative study of second-harmonic generation (SHG) and sum-frequency generation (SFG) in single-crystal and polycrystalline ZnSe, the polycrystalline material showed a dot pattern in the SHG as well as in the SFG output. No such pattern was found in the output from the single-crystal ZnSe sample. The second-harmonic and also the sum-frequency dot pattern, resembling a diffraction pattern, could be observed over a wide tuning range of the fundamental beam, between 1.1 and 1.6 μm, generated by a femtosecond optical parametric amplifier. The size of the observed pattern is dependent on wavelength and the dots show a characteristic polarization.