Optomechanical interaction and optomechanical oscillation in optical micro-resonators

Recent progress in optical waveguide/resonator fabrication has enabled measurable interaction between optical field and mechanical modes of micro/nano structures through optical forces. Optomechanical interaction is especially strong in high quality optical microcavities that also support high quality mechanical resonance. This strong coupling can be used to optically damp (optomechanical cooling) or actuate the corresponding mechanical mode (optomechanical oscillation). In an optomechanical oscillator (OMO) a continuous source of optical pump power generates self-sustained optomechanical oscillation at radio frequencies without utilizing any external feedback mechanism. These oscillations imprint themselves onto the transmitted optical power and modulate the amplitude of the output optical field at selected mechanical eigen frequencies of the microcavity. Characterization of the phase noise and oscillation frequency has confirmed that OMO has the potential to be used in certain RF-photonic systems.Here after an introduction to optical microresonators and optical forces, we explore the physics, fundamental characteristics and potential applications of optomechanical oscillation as a tool for linear and nonlinear optical amplitude modulation at single frequency. In all these studies silica microtoroid will be the main experimental platform. Next we briefly review recent advances in optomechanical cooling and development of new optomechanical devices.

Mani Hossein-Zadeh received his B.S. (1995) and M.S. (1997) degrees in Physics from Sharif University of Technology (SUT, Tehran-IRAN), and M.S. (2001) and PhD (2004) degrees in Electrical Engineering–Electrophysics from Viterbi school of engineering at Univeristy of Southern California (USC). From 1994-1998 he was a research asisstant in the Medical Laser Lab. (SUT) working on solid-state laser design, KDP crystal growth and experimental nonlinear optics. In 1999 he joined Advanced Electronic and Photonic Technology Lab at USC where he worked on the development of the first electro-optic microdisk modulator and designed and demonstrated the first photonic RF receiver based on high-Q LiNBO3 microdisk modulator. Prior to joining CHTM and ECE department at UNM, Dr Hossein-Zadeh held a postdoctoral appointment in Applied Physics department at California Institute of Technology (2005-2008) where he worked on fluidic optical resonators, optomechanical oscillator, free microtoroid optical resonators and optomechanical interaction in ultra-high-Q (UH-Q) optical microresonators.