Theory of enhanced second-harmonic generation in some artificial materials

We review the recent theoretical investigation on enhanced second-harmonic generation (SHG) in soft nonlinear optical materials based on ferrofluids, graded metallic films, and graded metal-dielectric films of anisotropic particles. The SHG of soft ferrofluid-based nonlinear optical materials possess magnetic-field controllabilities, i.e., magnetic-field-controllable anisotropy, red-shift and enhancement, which are caused to appear by the shift of a resonant plasmon frequency due to the formation of the chains of the coated nanoparticles. Both graded metallic films and graded metal-dielectric films of anisotropic particles can serve as a novel optical material for producing a broad structure in both the linear and SHG response and an enhancement in the SHG signal, due to the local field effects.