Observation of magneto-electric rectification at non-relativistic intensities.
Nat Commun 2020;
11:5296. [PMID:
33082355 PMCID:
PMC7576171 DOI:
10.1038/s41467-020-19125-w]
[Citation(s) in RCA: 5] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 04/23/2020] [Accepted: 09/25/2020] [Indexed: 11/16/2022] Open
Abstract
The subject of electromagnetism has often been called electrodynamics to emphasize the dominance of the electric field in dynamic light–matter interactions that take place under non-relativistic conditions. Here we show experimentally that the often neglected optical magnetic field can nevertheless play an important role in a class of optical nonlinearities driven by both the electric and magnetic components of light at modest (non-relativistic) intensities. We specifically report the observation of magneto-electric rectification, a previously unexplored nonlinearity at the molecular level which has important potential for energy conversion, ultrafast switching, nano-photonics, and nonlinear optics. Our experiments were carried out in nanocrystalline pentacene thin films possessing spatial inversion symmetry that prohibited second-order, all-electric nonlinearities but allowed magneto-electric rectification.
The role of the optical magnetic field is generally not considered at nonrelativistic light intensities. Here the authors show magneto-electric rectification, an optical nonlinear effect due to electric and magnetic field coupling, in a thin film of the organic semiconductor pentacene at non-relativistic intensities.
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