High-Q Quasibound States in the Continuum for Nonlinear Metasurfaces

Sharp electromagnetic resonances play an essential role in physics in general and optics in particular. The last decades have witnessed the successful developments of high-quality (Q) resonances in microcavities operating below the light line, which however is fundamentally challenging to access from free space. Alternatively, metasurface-based bound states in the continuum (BICs) offer a complementary solution of creating high-Q resonances in devices operating above the light line, yet the experimentally demonstrated Q factors under normal excitations are still limited. Here, we present the realizations of quasi-BIC under normal excitation with a record Q factor up to 18 511 by engineering the symmetry properties and the number of the unit cells in all-dielectric metasurface platforms. The high-Q quasi-BICs exhibit exceptionally high conversion efficiency for the third harmonic generation and even enable the second harmonic generation in Si metasurfaces. Such ultrasharp resonances achieved in this work may immediately boost the performances of BICs in a plethora of fundamental research and device applications, e.g., cavity QED, biosensing, nanolasing, and quantum light generations.