Giant optical nonlinearity of graphene in a strong magnetic field

Xianghan Yao, Alexey Belyanin

Published 2011-10-21, updated 2011-12-12Version 3

We present quantum-mechanical density-matrix formalism for calculating the nonlinear optical response of magnetized graphene, valid for arbitrarily strong magnetic and optical fields. We show that magnetized graphene possesses by far the highest third-order optical nonlinearity among all known materials. The giant nonlinearity originates from unique electronic properties and selection rules near the Dirac point. As a result, even one monolayer of graphene gives rise to appreciable nonlinear frequency conversion efficiency for incident infrared radiation.