Surface plasmon-enhanced transverse magnetic second-harmonic generation.

We present experimental studies on surface plasmon (SP) enhanced transverse magnetic second-harmonic generation (T-MSHG) in single-crystal iron films grown by molecular beam epitaxy at room temperature on MgO (001) substrates. We show that it is possible to achieve both strongly enhanced T-MSHG intensity and high magnetic contrast ratio under attenuated total reflection configuration without using complex heterostructures because MSHG is generated directly at the iron surface where SPs are present. The T-MSHG has a much larger contrast ratio than transverse magneto-optical Kerr effect (T-MOKE) and shows great potential for a new generation of bio-chemical sensors due to its very high surface sensitivity. In addition, by analyzing the experimental results and the simulations based on SP field-enhancement theory, we demonstrate that the second-order susceptibility of MSHG shows great anisotropy and the tensor χ(xzz)(odd) is dominant in our sample.