Third order anharmonic scattering in light–matter systems can drive a wide variety of practical and physically interesting processes from lasing to polariton condensation. Motivated by recent experimental results in the nonlinear optics of localized phonon polaritons, in this Letter we develop a quantum theory capable of describing four-wave mixing in arbitrarily inhomogeneous photonic environments. Using it, we investigate Kerr self-interaction and parametric scattering of surface and localized phonon polaritons, showing both processes to be within experimental reach.

中文翻译：

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声子极化子的四波混合理论

光物质系统中的三阶非谐波散射可以驱动从激光到极化子凝聚的各种实际和物理上有趣的过程。根据最近在局部声子极化子的非线性光学中的实验结果，在这封信中，我们开发了一种能够描述任意非均匀光子环境中四波混合的量子理论。使用它，我们研究了表面和局域声子极化子的克尔自相互作用和参数散射，表明这两个过程都在实验范围之内。