Nanoscale photonic crystal cavity optomechanical devices enable detection of nanomechanical phenomena with a sensitivity sufficient to observe quantum effects. Here we present the design of a one-dimensional air-mode photonic crystal cavity patterned in a silicon nitride nanobeam, and show that it forms the basis for cavity optomechanical split-beam and paddle nanocavity devices useful for force detection and nonlinear quantum sensing. The air-mode of this device is advantageous for optomechanical coupling, while also having ultrahigh optical quality factor $Q_o\sim 10^6$ despite its proximity to the light-line and the relatively low refractive index of silicon nitride. Paddle nanocavities realized from this device have a quadratic coupling coefficient $g^{(2)}/2π$~=~10~MHz/nm$^{2}$, and their performance within the context of quantum optomechanics experiments is analyzed.
We report on the optical and mechanical characterization of arrays of parallel micromechanical membranes. Pairs of high-tensile stress, 100 nm-thick silicon nitride membranes are assembled parallel with each other with separations ranging from 8.5 to 200 $μ$m. Their optical properties are accurately determined using a combination of broadband and monochromatic illuminations and the lowest vibrational mode frequencies and mechanical quality factors are determined interferometrically. The results and techniques demonstrated are promising for investigations of collective phenomena in optomechanic…
Aluminum nitride (AlN) has been widely used in microeletromechanical resonators for its excellent electromechanical properties. Here we demonstrate the use of AlN as an optomechanical material that simultaneously offer low optical and mechanical loss. Integrated AlN microring resonators in the shape of suspended rings exhibit high optical quality factor (Q) with loaded Q up to 125,000. Optomechanical transduction of the Brownian motion of a GHz contour mode yields a displacement sensitivity of 6.2\times10^(-18)m/Hz^(1/2) in ambient air.
We demonstrate optomechanically-mediated electromagnetically-induced transparency and wavelength conversion in silicon nitride (Si3N4) microdisk resonators. Fabricated devices support whispering gallery optical modes with a quality factor (Q) of 10^6, and radial breathing mechanical modes with a Q=10^4 and a resonance frequency of 625 MHz, so that the system is in the resolved sideband regime. Placing a strong optical control field on the red (blue) detuned sideband of the optical mode produces coherent interference with a resonant probe beam, inducing a transparency (absorption) window for th…
We report on miniature GaAs disk optomechanical resonators vibrating in air in the radiofrequency range. The flexural modes of the disks are studied by scanning electron microscopy and optical interferometry, and correctly modeled with the elasticity theory for annular plates. The mechanical damping is systematically measured, and confronted with original analytical models for air damping. Formulas are derived that correctly reproduce both the mechanical modes and the damping behavior, and can serve as design tools for optomechanical applications in fluidic environment.
We demonstrate wheel-shaped silicon optomechanical resonators for resonant operation in ambient air. The high finesse of optical whispering gallery modes (loaded optical Q factor above 500,000) allows for efficient transduction of the wheel resonator's mechanical radial contour modes of frequency up to 1.35 GHz with high mechanical Q factor around 4,000 in air.
Optical forces in guided-wave nanostructures have recently been proposed as an effective means of mechanically actuating and tuning optical components. In this work, we study the properties of a photonic crystal optomechanical cavity consisting of a pair of patterned silicon nitride nanobeams. Internal stresses in the stoichiometric silicon nitride thin-film are used to produce inter-beam slot-gaps ranging from 560 to 40nm. A general pump-probe measurement scheme is described which determines, self-consistently, the contributions of thermo-mechanical, thermo-optic, and radiation pressure effec…
Silicon photonics has offered a versatile platform for the recent development of integrated optomechanical circuits. However, silicon is limited to wavelengths above 1100 nm and does not allow device operation in the visible spectrum range where low noise lasers are conveniently available. The narrow band gap of silicon also makes silicon optomechanical devices susceptible to strong two-photon absorption and free carrier absorption, which often introduce strong thermal effect that limit the devices' stability and cooling performance. Further, silicon also does not provide the desired lowest or…
The temperature dependence of the asymmetry between Stokes and anti-Stokes Raman scattering can be exploited for self-calibrating, optically-based thermometry. In the context of cavity optomechanics, we observe the cavity-enhanced scattering of light interacting with the standing-wave drumhead modes of a silicon nitride membrane mechanical resonator. The ratio of the amplitude of Stokes to anti-Stokes scattered light is used to measure temperatures of optically-cooled mechanical modes down to the level of a few vibrational quanta. We demonstrate that the Raman-ratio technique is able to measur…
Optical measurement of the motion of a 940 kHz mechanical resonance of a silicon nitride nanostring resonator is demonstrated with a read out noise imprecision reaching 37 dB below that of the resonator's zero-point fluctuations. Via intensity modulation of the optical probe laser, radiation pressure feedback is used to cool and damp the mechanical mode from an initial room temperature occupancy of $\bar{n}_{b} = 6.5 \times 10^6$ ($T_{b}=295$K) down to a phonon occupation of $\langle n \rangle = 66 \pm 10$, representing a mode temperature of $T_{m} \approx 3$mK. The five decades of cooling is …
Hexagonal boron nitride (hBN) is an emerging layered material that plays a key role in a variety of two-dimensional devices, and has potential applications in nanophotonics and nanomechanics. Here, we demonstrate the first cavity optomechanical system incorporating hBN. Nanomechanical resonators consisting of hBN beams with predicted thickness between 8 nm and 51 nm were fabricated using electron beam induced etching and positioned in the optical nearfield of silicon microdisk cavities. A 160 fm/$\sqrt{\text{Hz}}$ sensitivity to the hBN nanobeam motion is demonstrated, allowing observation of …
Optical cavities containing a negative dispersion medium have been proposed as a means of improving the sensitivity of laser interferometric gravitational wave (GW) detectors through the creation of white light signal recycling cavities. Here we classically demonstrate that negative dispersion can be realized using an optomechanical cavity pumped by a blue detuned doublet. We used an 85mm cavity with an intra-cavity silicon nitride membrane. Tunable negative dispersion is demonstrated, with a phase derivative $dφ/df$ from $-0.14$ Deg$\cdot$Hz$^{-1}$ to $-4.2\times10^{-3}$ Deg$\cdot$Hz$^{-1}$.
Optomechanical SiN nano-oscillators in high-finesse Fabry-Perot cavities can be used to investigate the interaction between mechanical and optical degree of freedom for ultra-sensitive metrology and fundamental quantum mechanical studies. In this work we present a nano-oscillator made of a high-stress round-shaped SiN membrane with an integrated on-chip 3D seismic filter properly designed to reduce mechanical losses. This oscillator works in the 200 kHz - 5 MHz range and features a mechanical quality factor of $Q\simeq10^7$ and a Q-frequency product in excess of $6.2 \times 10^{12}$ Hz at room…
Singularities that symbolize abrupt changes and exhibit extraordinary behavior are of broad interest. We experimentally study optomechanically induced singularities in a compound system consisting of a three-dimensional aluminum superconducting cavity and a metalized high-coherence silicon nitride membrane resonator. Mechanically-induced coherent perfect absorption and anti-lasing occur simultaneously under a critical optomechanical coupling strength. Meanwhile, the phase around the cavity resonance undergoes an abrupt $π$-phase transition, which further flips the phase slope in the frequency …
We present a monolithic integrated aluminum nitride (AlN) optomechanical resonator in which the mechanical motion is actuated by piezoelectric force and the displacement is transduced by a high-Q optical cavity. The AlN optomechanical resonator is excited from a radio-frequency electrode via a small air gap to eliminate resonator-to-electrode loss. We observe the electrically excited mechanical motion at 47.3 MHz, 1.04 GHz, and 3.12 GHz, corresponding to the 1st, 2nd, and 4th radial-contour mode of the wheel resonator respectively. An equivalent circuit model is developed to describe the obser…
We demonstrate a method to optically map multiple modes of mechanical structures simultaneously. The fast and robust method, based on a modified phase-lock-loop, is demonstrated on a silicon nitride membrane and compared with three different approaches. Line traces and two-dimensional maps of different modes are acquired. The high quality enables us to determine the weights of individual contributions in superpositions of degenerate modes.
We present the design of a femtogram L3-nanobeam photonic crystal cavity for optomechanical studies. Two symmetric nanobeams are created by placing three air slots in a silicon photonic crystal slab where three holes are removed. The optical quality factor (Q) is optimized up to 52,000. The nanobeams' mechanical frequencies are higher than 600 MHz due to their femtogram effective modal masses. The optical and mechanical modes are dispersively coupled with a vacuum optomechanical coupling rate g0/2pi exceeding 200 kHz. The anchor-loss-limited mechanical Q of the differential beam mode is evalua…
Optomechanical coupling between a light field and the motion of a cavity mirror via radiation pressure plays an important role for the exploration of macroscopic quantum physics and for the detection of gravitational waves (GWs). It has been used to cool mechanical oscillators into their quantum ground states and has been considered to boost the sensitivity of GW detectors, e.g. via the optical spring effect. Here, we present the experimental characterization of generalized, that is, dispersive and dissipative optomechanical coupling, with a macroscopic (1.5mm)^2-sized silicon nitride (SiN) me…
Experimental exploration of synchronization in scalable oscillator micro systems has unfolded a deeper understanding of networks, collective phenomena, and signal processing. Cavity optomechanical devices have played an important role in this scenario, with the perspective of bridging optical and radio frequencies through nonlinear classical and quantum synchronization concepts. In its simplest form, synchronization occurs when an oscillator is entrained by a signal with frequency nearby the oscillator's tone, and becomes increasingly challenging as their frequency detuning increases. Here, we…
Design of a doubly-clamped beam structure capable of localizing mechanical and optical energy at the nanoscale is presented. The optical design is based upon photonic crystal concepts in which patterning of a nanoscale-cross-section beam can result in strong optical localization to an effective optical mode volume of 0.2 cubic wavelengths ((λ_{c})^3). By placing two identical nanobeams within the near field of each other, strong optomechanical coupling can be realized for differential motion between the beams. Current designs for thin film silicon nitride beams at a wavelength of 1.5 microns i…
We investigate the nonlinear optical response of suspended 1D photonic crystal nanocavities fabricated on a silicon nitride chip. Strong thermo-optical nonlinearities are demonstrated for input powers as low as $2\,μ\text{W}$ and a self-sustained pulsing regime is shown to emerge with periodicity of several seconds. As the input power and laser wavelength are varied the temporal patterns change in period, duty cycle and shape. This dynamics is attributed to the multiple timescale competition between thermo-optical and thermo-optomechanical effects and closely resembles the relaxation oscillati…
Observation of quantum phenomena in cryogenic, optically cooled mechanical resonators has been recently achieved by a few experiments based on cavity optomechanics. A well-established experimental platform is based on a thin film stoichiometric ($ Si_3 N_4 $) nanomembrane embedded in a Fabry-Perot cavity, where the coupling with the light field is provided by the radiation pressure of the light impinging on the membrane surface. Two crucial parameters have to be optimized to ensure that these systems work at the quantum level: the cooperativity $ C$ describing the optomechanical coupling and t…
Operation of nanomechanical devices in water environment has been challenging due to the strong viscous damping that greatly impedes the mechanical motion. Here we demonstrate an optomechanical micro-wheel resonator integrated in microfluidic system that supports low-loss optical resonances at near-visible wavelength with quality factor up to 1.5 million. The device can be operated in self-oscillation mode in air with low threshold power of 45 uW. The very high optical Q allows the observation of the thermal Brownian motion of the mechanical mode in both air and water environment with high sig…
We experimentally demonstrate an optomechanical cavity based on an air-slot photonic crystal cavity with optical quality factor Qo=4.2\times10^4 and a small modal volume of 0.05 cubic wavelengths. The optical mode is coupled with the in-plane mechanical modes with frequencies up to hundreds of MHz. The fundamental mechanical mode shows a frequency of 65 MHz and a mechanical quality factor of 376. The optical spring effect, optical damping and amplification are observed with a large experimental optomechanical coupling rate gom/2pi of 154 GHz/nm, corresponding to a vacuum optomechanical couplin…
We experimentally and theoretically investigate mechanical nanooscillators coupled to the light in an optical ring resonator made of dielectric mirrors. We identify an optomechanical damping mechanism that is fundamentally different to the well known cooling in standing wave cavities. While, in a standing wave cavity the mechanical oscillation shifts the resonance frequency of the cavity in a ring resonator the frequency does not change. Instead the position of the nodes is shifted with the mechanical excursion. We derive the damping rates and test the results experimentally with a silicon-nit…
We develop a chip-scale cavity optomechanical system in single-crystal lithium niobate that exhibits high optical quality factors and a large frequency-quality product as high as $3.6\times 10^{12}$ Hz at room temperature and atmosphere. The excellent optical and mechanical properties together with the strong optomechanical coupling allow us to efficiently excite the coherent regenerative optomechanical oscillation operating at 375.8 MHz with a threshold power of 174 ${\rm μW}$ in the air. The demonstrated lithium niobate optomechanical device enables great potential for achieving electro-opti…
We describe the strong optomechanical dynamical interactions in ultrahigh-Q/V slot-type photonic crystal cavities. The dispersive coupling is based on a mode-gap photonic crystal cavities with light localization in an air mode with 0.02(lambda/n)3 modal volumes while preserving optical cavity Q up to 5 x 106. The mechanical mode is modeled to have fundamental resonance omega_m/2pi of 460 MHz and a quality factor Qm estimated at 12,000. For this slot-type optomechanical cavity, the dispersive coupling gom is numerically computed at up to 940 GHz/nm (Lom of 202 nm) for the fundamental optomechan…
We report disk-shaped silicon optomechanical resonators with frequency up to 1.75 GHz in the ultrahigh frequency band. Optical transduction of the thermal motion of the disks' in-plane vibrational modes yields a displacement sensitivity of 4.1 \times 10^(-17) m/Hz^(1/2). Due to the reduced clamping loss, these disk resonators possess high mechanical quality factors (Q), with the highest value of 4370 for the 1.47 GHz mode measured in ambient air. Numerical simulation on the modal frequency and mechanical Q for disks of varying undercut shows modal coupling and suggests a realistic pedestal siz…
Cavity optomechanics provides high-performance sensor technology, and the scheme is also applicable to liquid samples for biological and rheological applications. However, previously reported methods using fluidic capillary channels and liquid droplets are based on fixed-by-design structures and therefore do not allow an active free-space approach to the samples. Here, we demonstrate an alternate technique using a probe-based architecture with a twin-microbottle resonator. The probe consists of two microbottle optomechanical resonators, where one bottle (for detection) is immersed in liquid an…
We demonstrate the use of a compound optical cavity as linear displacement detector, by measuring the thermal motion of a silicon nitride suspended membrane acting as the external mirror of a near-infrared Littrow laser diode. Fluctuations in the laser optical power induced by the membrane vibrations are collected by a photodiode integrated within the laser, and then measured with a spectrum analyzer. The dynamics of the membrane driven by a piezoelectric actuator is investigated as a function of air pressure and actuator displacement in a homodyne configuration. The high Q-factor ($\sim 3.4\c…
Coherent optomechanical interaction between acoustic and optical waves known as stimulated Brillouin scattering (SBS) can enable ultra-high resolution signal processing and narrow linewidth lasers important for next generation wireless communications, precision sensing, and quantum information processing. While SBS has recently been studied extensively in integrated waveguides, many implementations rely on complicated fabrication schemes, using suspended waveguides, or non-standard materials such as As$_2$S$_3$. The absence of SBS in standard and mature fabrication platforms prevents large-sca…
Photonic crystal (PhC) membranes patterned with sub-wavelength periods offer a unique combination of high reflectivity, low mass, and high mechanical quality factor. We demonstrate a PhC membrane that we use as one mirror of a Fabry-Perot cavity with finesse as high as $F=35,000(500)$, corresponding to a record high PhC reflectivity of $R=0.999835(6)$. The fundamental mechanical frequency is 426 kHz, more than twice the optical linewidth, placing it firmly in the resolved-sideband regime. The mechanical quality factor in vacuum is $Q=1.1(1)\times 10^6$, allowing us to achieve values of the sin…
The optical lever is a centuries old and widely-used detection technique employed in applications ranging from consumer products, industrial sensors to precision force microscopes used in scientific research. However, despite the long history, its quantum limits have yet to be explored. In general, any precision optical measurement is accompanied by optical force induced disturbance to the measured object (termed as back action) leading to a standard quantum limit(SQL). Here we give a simple ray optics description of how such back action can be evaded in optical lever detection to beat SQL. We…
High-stress Si$_3$N$_4$ nanoresonators have become an attractive choice for electro- and optomechanical devices. Membrane resonators can achieve quality factor ($Q$) - frequency ($f$) products exceeding $10^{13}$ Hz, enabling (in principle) quantum coherent operation at room temperature. String-like beam resonators possess conventionally 10 times smaller $Q\cdot f$ products; however, on account of their much larger $Q$-to-mass ratio and reduced mode density, they remain a canonical choice for precision force, mass, and charge sensing, and have recently enabled Heisenberg-limited position measu…
Fully reconfigurable add-drop filters (ADFs) have important applications in optical communication and information processing. Here we demonstrate a broadly tunable add-drop filter based on a double-disk cavity optomechanical system, side-coupled with a pair of tapered fiber waveguides. By varying the coupling rates between the cavity and the two waveguides, we investigate the dependence of the through (drop) efficiency on the coupling rates, which agrees well with the theoretical results. By optimizing the cavity-waveguide coupling rates, a drop efficiency of 89% and a transmission of 1.9% hav…
We describe the use of monolithic, buckled-dome cavities as ultrasound sensors. Patterned delamination within a compressively stressed thin film stack produces high-finesse plano-concave optical resonators with sealed and empty cavity regions. The buckled mirror also functions as a flexible membrane, highly responsive to changes in external pressure. Owing to their efficient opto-acousto-mechanical coupling, thermal-displacement-noise limited sensitivity is achieved at low optical interrogation powers and for modest optical (Q ~ 10^3) and mechanical (Q ~ 10^2) quality factors. We predict and v…
Nanophononics has the potential for information transfer, in an analogous manner to its photonic and electronic counterparts. The adoption of phononic systems has been limited, due to difficulties associated with the generation, manipulation, and detection of phonons, especially at GHz frequencies. Existing techniques often require piezoelectric materials with an external radiofrequency excitation that are not readily integrated into existing CMOS infrastructures, while non-piezoelectric demonstrations have been inefficient. In this work, we explore the optomechanical generation of coherent ph…
Monolithic Integration of Piezo-Optomechanical Photonics and CMOS Electronics
The MITRE Corporation（MITRE公司）；Electrical, Computer, and Energy Engineering, University of Colorado Boulder（科罗拉多大学博尔德分校电气、计算机和能源工程学院）；Sandia National Laboratories（桑迪亚国家实验室）；Wyant College of Optical Sciences, University of Arizona（亚利桑那大学怀恩特光学科学学院）；Research Laboratory of Electronics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology（麻省理工学院电子研究实验室）
The development of Si$_3$N$_4$ nanobeam optomechanical crystals is reviewed. These structures consist of a 350 nm thick, 700 nm wide doubly-clamped Si$_3$N$_4$ nanobeam that is periodically patterned with an array of air holes to which a defect region is introduced. The periodic patterning simultaneously creates a photonic bandgap for 980 nm band photons and a phononic bandgap for 4 GHz phonons, with the defect region serving to co-localize optical and mechanical modes within their respective bandgaps. These optical and mechanical modes interact dispersively with a coupling rate $g_{0}/2π\appr…
In this article, we rigorously analyze the effects of the dispersion forces (Casimir and van der Waals forces) on a nano-optomechanical device based on a silicon waveguide and a silicon dioxide substrate, surrounded by air and driven by optical forces. The dispersion forces are calculated using a modified Lifshitz theory, in order to take into account the device thickness and material s dielectric permittivities, which are obtained from experimental optical data and validated by means of a rigorous 3D FDTD simulation. We also take into account the mechanical nonlinearity of the waveguide, whic…
High-Q optical resonators allow label-free detection of individual nanoparticles through perturbation of optical signatures but have practical limitations due to reliance on random diffusion to deliver particles to the sensing region. We have recently developed microfluidic optomechanical resonators that allow detection of free-flowing particles in fluid media with near perfect detection efficiency, without requiring labeling, binding, or direct access to the optical mode. Rapid detection of single particles is achieved through a long-range optomechanical interaction that influences the scatte…
Freestanding Silicon nitride (SiN) devices are central to the field of nanomechanical resonators and for other technology applications such as transmission electron imaging and nanopore bioassays. The nanofabrication techniques used for fabricating these devices often lack flexibility. While photolithography requires printing of an expensive photomask for each new design iteration, electron-beam lithography is extremely slow and commands high equipment cost. Here we demonstrate maskless rapid prototyping of freestanding SiN nanomechanical resonators fabricated by femtosecond laser ablation of …
We investigate the optomechanical properties of tensile-strained ternary InGaP nanomembranes grown on GaAs. This material system combines the benefits of highly strained membranes based on stoichiometric silicon nitride, with the unique properties of thin-film semiconductor single crystals, as previously demonstrated with suspended GaAs. Here we employ lattice mismatch in epitaxial growth to impart an intrinsic tensile strain to a monocrystalline thin film (approximately 30 nm thick). These structures exhibit mechanical quality factors of 2*10^6 or beyond at room temperature and 17 K for eigen…
Cavity optomechanics, the study of the interplay between light and mechanical properties of matter, has triggered a wide range of groundbreaking researches from cavity quantum electrodynamics, label free single molecule detection to the creation of phonon laser. Using femtosecond laser direct writing followed by chemo-mechanical polishing, here we report an ultrahigh quality (Q~10^7) factor lithium niobate (LN) whispering gallery microresonator monolithically integrated with in-plane microelectrodes. Coherent regenerative optomechanical oscillation with an effective mechanical quality (Qm) fac…
Recent advances in photonic integrated circuits (PICs) have enabled a new generation of "programmable many-mode interferometers" (PMMIs) realized by cascaded Mach Zehnder Interferometers (MZIs) capable of universal linear-optical transformations on N input-output optical modes. PMMIs serve critical functions in photonic quantum information processing, quantum-enhanced sensor networks, machine learning and other applications. However, PMMI implementations reported to date rely on thermo-optic phase shifters, which limit applications due to slow response times and high power consumption. Here, w…
Integrating nanoscale electromechanical transducers and nanophotonic devices potentially can enable new acousto-optic devices to reach unprecedented high frequencies and modulation efficiency. Here, we demonstrate acousto-optic modulation of a photonic crystal nanocavity using Lamb waves with frequency up to 19 GHz, reaching the microwave K band. The devices are fabricated in suspended aluminum nitride membrane. Excitation of acoustic waves is achieved with interdigital transducers with periods as small as 300 nm. Confining both acoustic wave and optical wave within the thickness of the membra…
