753 research outputs found
Tensile strained membranes for cavity optomechanics
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 eigenfrequencies
up to 1 MHz, yielding Q*f products of 2*10^12 Hz for a tensile stress of ~170
MPa. Incorporating such membranes in a high finesse Fabry-Perot cavity, we
extract an upper limit to the total optical loss (including both absorption and
scatter) of 40 ppm at 1064 nm and room temperature. Further reductions of the
In content of this alloy will enable tensile stress levels of 1 GPa, with the
potential for a significant increase in the Q*f product, assuming no
deterioration in the mechanical loss at this composition and strain level. This
materials system is a promising candidate for the integration of strained
semiconductor membrane structures with low-loss semiconductor mirrors and for
realizing stacks of membranes for enhanced optomechanical coupling.Comment: 10 pages, 3 figure
Single crystal diamond nanobeam waveguide optomechanics
Optomechanical devices sensitively transduce and actuate motion of
nanomechanical structures using light. Single--crystal diamond promises to
improve the performance of optomechanical devices, while also providing
opportunities to interface nanomechanics with diamond color center spins and
related quantum technologies. Here we demonstrate dissipative
waveguide--optomechanical coupling exceeding 35 GHz/nm to diamond nanobeams
supporting both optical waveguide modes and mechanical resonances, and use this
optomechanical coupling to measure nanobeam displacement with a sensitivity of
fm/ and optical bandwidth nm. The nanobeams are
fabricated from bulk optical grade single--crystal diamond using a scalable
undercut etching process, and support mechanical resonances with quality factor
at room temperature, and in cryogenic
conditions (5K). Mechanical self--oscillations, resulting from interplay
between photothermal and optomechanical effects, are observed with amplitude
exceeding 200 nm for sub-W absorbed optical power, demonstrating the
potential for optomechanical excitation and manipulation of diamond
nanomechanical structures.Comment: Minor changes. Corrected error in units of applied stress in Fig. 1
Photothermal effects in ultra-precisely stabilized tunable microcavities
We study the mechanical stability of a tunable high-finesse microcavity under
ambient conditions and investigate light-induced effects that can both suppress
and excite mechanical fluctuations. As an enabling step, we demonstrate the
ultra-precise electronic stabilization of a microcavity. We then show that
photothermal mirror expansion can provide high-bandwidth feedback and improve
cavity stability by almost two orders of magnitude. At high intracavity power,
we observe self-oscillations of mechanical resonances of the cavity. We explain
the observations by a dynamic photothermal instability, leading to parametric
driving of mechanical motion. For an optimized combination of electronic and
photothermal stabilization, we achieve a feedback bandwidth of kHz and a
noise level of m rms
Laser cooling and control of excitations in superfluid helium
Superfluidity is an emergent quantum phenomenon which arises due to strong
interactions between elementary excitations in liquid helium. These excitations
have been probed with great success using techniques such as neutron and light
scattering. However measurements to-date have been limited, quite generally, to
average properties of bulk superfluid or the driven response far out of thermal
equilibrium. Here, we use cavity optomechanics to probe the thermodynamics of
superfluid excitations in real-time. Furthermore, strong light-matter
interactions allow both laser cooling and amplification of the thermal motion.
This provides a new tool to understand and control the microscopic behaviour of
superfluids, including phonon-phonon interactions, quantised vortices and
two-dimensional quantum phenomena such as the Berezinskii-Kosterlitz-Thouless
transition. The third sound modes studied here also offer a pathway towards
quantum optomechanics with thin superfluid films, including femtogram effective
masses, high mechanical quality factors, strong phonon-phonon and phonon-vortex
interactions, and self-assembly into complex geometries with sub-nanometre
feature size.Comment: 6 pages, 4 figures. Supplementary information attache
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