Cascaded third-harmonic generation in a single short-range-ordered nonlinear photonic crystal.

Collinear third-harmonic generation at 526.7 nm was realized by the simultaneous phase matching of two second-order processes in a single quadratic crystal: second-harmonic generation (SHG) and sum-frequency mixing (SFM). The measured conversion efficiency was 12%. As a nonlinear medium a LiNbO(3) nonlinear photonic crystal with short-range order was used that allowed simultaneous phase matching by use of discrete reciprocal vector (for the SHG process) and continuous reciprocal vectors (for the SFM process). It was demonstrated that the third harmonic could be generated efficiently in such a crystal even if the intermediate process of SHG was not perfectly phase matched.