Surface-enhanced optical third-harmonic generation in Ag island films.

Surface-enhanced optical third-harmonic generation (THG) is observed in silver island films. The THG intensity from Ag nanoparticles is enhanced by more than 2 orders of magnitude with respect to the THG intensity from a smooth and homogeneous silver surface. This enhancement is attributed to a local plasmon excitation and resonance of the local field at the third-harmonic wavelength. The diffuse and depolarized component of the enhanced THG is associated with the third-order hyper-Rayleigh scattering in a two-dimensional random array of silver nanoparticles.