Abstract: | I propose a method for enhancing the cascaded phase shift of the fundamental wave associated with second-harmonic generation in aperiodic quasi-phase matched (QPM) gratings. The position and length of one of the domains were varied to maximize the cascaded phase shift. A maximum enhancement of 84% in the cascaded phase shift relative to a perfectly periodic QPM grating was obtained at a moderate fundamental input intensity without initial seeding of the second-harmonic wave. All-optical intensity modulation is also proposed with another optimized aperiodic QPM grating. |