NONLINEAR OPTICAL STUDIES WITH 2D MATERIALS

Abstract

When the intensity of light incident on a material gets strong enough, the usual (linear) description for the optical response of materials is not valid anymore and we need to extend it to include the material’s nonlinear response. Nonlinear optics is a field of interest on itself, but it also provides extremely interesting tools to investigate other physical phenomena. In my thesis, I used some of these tools/techniques to tackle two different projects, namely (i) to probe excitonic level of few-layer black phosphorous by third-harmonic generation and (ii) to probe valley polarization in monolayer transition metal dichalcogenides and graphene by second-harmonic generation.