  Surface-enhanced optical third-harmonic generation (THG) is observed in
silver island films. The THG intensity from Ag nanoparticles is enhanced by
more than two orders of magnitude with respect to the THG intensity from a
smooth and homogeneous silver surface. This enhancement is attributed to 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 2-D random array
of silver nanoparticles.
