No Arabic abstract
In this work we combine the large per-photon optical gradient force with the sensitive feedback of a high quality factor whispering-gallery microcavity. The cavity geometry, consisting of a pair of silica disks separated by a nanoscale gap, shows extremely strong dynamical backaction, powerful enough to excite giant coherent oscillations even under heavily damped conditions (mechanical Q=4). In vacuum, the threshold for regenerative mechanical oscillation is lowered to an optical input power of only 270-nanoWatts, or roughly 1000 stored cavity photons, and efficient cooling of the mechanical motion is obtained with a temperature compression factor of 13-dB for 4-microWatts of dropped optical input power.
Here we propose and demonstrate an all-optical wavelength-routing approach which uses a tuning mechanism based upon the optical gradient force in a specially-designed nano-optomechanical system. The resulting mechanically-compliant spiderweb resonantor realizes seamless wavelength routing over a range of 3000 times the intrinsic channel width, with a tuning efficiency of 309-GHz/mW, a switching time of less than 200-ns, and 100% channel-quality preservation over the entire tuning range. These results indicate the potential for radiation pressure actuated devices to be used in a variety of photonics applications, such as channel routing/switching, buffering, dispersion compensation, pulse trapping/release, and widely tunable lasers.
The theoretical work of V.B. Braginsky predicted that radiation pressure can couple the mechanical, mirror-eigenmodes of a Fabry-Perot resonator to its optical modes, leading to a parametric oscillation instability. This regime is characterized by regenerative mechanical oscillation of the mechanical mirror eigenmodes. We have recently observed the excitation of mechanical modes in an ultra-high-Q optical microcavity. Here, we present a detailed experimental analysis of this effect and demonstrate that radiation pressure is the excitation mechanism of the observed mechanical oscillations.
We present two complementary designs of pneumatically actuated and kinematically positioned optics mounts: one designed for vertical mounting and translation, the other designed for horizontal mounting and translation. The design and measured stability make these mounts well-suited to experiments with laser-cooled atoms.
Topological insulators possess protected boundary states which are robust against disorders and have immense implications in both fermionic and bosonic systems. Harnessing these topological effects in non-equilibrium scenarios is highly desirable and has led to the development of topological lasers. The topologically protected boundary states usually lie within the bulk bandgap, and selectively exciting them without inducing instability in the bulk modes of bosonic systems is challenging. Here, we consider topological parametrically driven nonlinear resonator arrays that possess complex eigenvalues only in the edge modes in spite of the uniform pumping. We show parametric oscillation occurs in the topological boundary modes of one and two-dimensional systems as well as in the corner modes of a higher-order topological insulator system. Furthermore, we demonstrate squeezing dynamics below the oscillation threshold, where the quantum properties of the topological edge modes are robust against certain disorders. Our work sheds light on the dynamics of weakly nonlinear topological systems driven out of equilibrium and reveals their intriguing behavior in the quantum regime.
The tremendous progress in light scattering engineering made it feasible to develop optical tweezers allowing capture, hold, and controllable displacement of submicronsize particles and biological structures. However, the momentum conservation law imposes a fundamental restriction on the optical pressure to be repulsive in paraxial fields. Although different approaches to get around this restriction have been proposed, they are rather sophisticated and rely on either wavefront engineering or utilize active media. Herein, we revisit the issue of optical forces by their analytic continuation to the complex frequency plane and considering their behavior in transient. We show that the exponential excitation at the complex frequency offers an intriguing ability to achieve a pulling force for a passive resonator of any shape and composition even in the paraxial approximation, the remarkable effect which is not reduced to the Fourier transform. The approach is linked to the virtual gain effect when an appropriate transient decay of the excitation signal makes it weaker than the outgoing signal that carries away greater energy and momentum flux density. The approach is implemented for the Fabry-Perot cavity and a high refractive index dielectric nanoparticle, a fruitful platform for intracellular spectroscopy and lab-on-a-chip technologies where the proposed technique may found unprecedented capabilities.