Plasmomechanical Systems: Principles and Applications

Extreme confinement of electromagnetic waves and mechanical displacement fields to nanometer dimensions through plasmonic nanostructures offers unprecedented opportunities for greatly enhanced interaction strength, increased bandwidth, lower power consumption, chip-scale fabrication, and efficient actuation of mechanical systems at the nanoscale. Conversely, coupling mechanical oscillators to plasmonic nanostructures introduces mechanical degrees of freedom to otherwise static plasmonic structures thus giving rise to the generation of extremely large resonance shifts even for minor position changes. This nanoscale marriage of plasmonics and mechanics has led to the emergence of a new field of study called plasmomechanics that explores the fundamental principles underneath the coupling between light and plasmomechanical nanoresonators. In this review, both the fundamental concepts and applications of plasmomechanics as an emerging field of study are discussed. After an overview of the basic principles of plasmomechanics, the active tuning mechanisms of plasmonic nano-mechanical systems are extensively analyzed. Moreover, the recent developments on the practical implications of plasmomechanic systems for such applications as biosensing and infrared detection are highlighted. Finally, an outlook on the implications of the plasmomechanical nanosystems for development of point-of-care diagnostic devices that can help early and rapid detection of fatal diseases are forwarded.     

基于Bose-Einstein凝聚腔光力学系统的可调控相干完美吸收

研究了基于Bose-Einstein凝聚(BEC)腔光力学系统中的相干完美吸收现象,阐述了诱导相干完美吸收产生的条件,分析了强耦合BEC光力学腔发生相干完美吸收时的能量转换.通过控制泵浦场功率可以有效调制相干完美吸收.当相干完美吸收产生时,输入探测场能量完全转化为机械振子和腔场能量而不产生任何透射和反射,并且通过改变腔的品质因子可实现能量萃取.强耦合BEC腔光力学系统为基于相干完美吸收的换能器、调制器及光开关等潜在应用提供了理论基础.     

Coherent coupling between an optomechanical membrane and an interacting photon Bose–Einstein condensate

In this paper, we study theoretically the optomechanical interaction of an interacting condensate of photons with an oscillating mechanical membrane in a microcavity. We show that in the Bogoliubov approximation, due to the large number of photons in the condensate, there is a linear strong effective coupling between the Bogoliubov mode of the photonic Bose–Einstein condensate (BEC) and the mechanical motion of the membrane which depends on the photon–photon scattering potential. This coupling leads to the cooling of the mechanical motion, the normal mode splitting (NMS), the squeezing of the output field and the entanglement between the excited mode of the cavity and the mechanical mode. Since the photon condensation occurs at room temperature, this hybrid system can be potentially considered as a room temperature source of squeezed light as well as a suited candidate for exploring the quantum effects. We show that, on one hand, the non-linearity of the photon gas increases the degree of the squeezing of the output field of the microcavity and the efficiency of the cooling process at high temperatures. On the other hand, it reduces the NMS in the displacement spectrum of the oscillating membrane and the degree of the optomechanical entanglement. In addition, the temperature of the photonic BEC can be used to control the above-mentioned phenomena.     

Optomechanical effect on the Dicke quantum phase transition and quasi-particle damping in a Bose–Einstein condensate: a new tool to measure weak force

Abstract

We make a semi-classical steady state analysis of the influence of mirror motion on the quantum phase transition for an optomechanical Dicke model in the thermodynamic limit. An additional external mechanical pump is shown to modify the critical value of atom–photon coupling needed to observe the quantum phase transition. We further show how to choose the mechanical pump frequency and cavity–laser detuning to produce extremely cold condensates. The present system can be used as a quantum device to measure weak forces.     

Normal-mode splitting and output-field squeezing in a Kerr-down conversion optomechanical system

An investigation is reported of the effects of a Kerr-down conversion nonlinear crystal inside an intrinsically nonlinear optomechanical cavity on the dynamics of the oscillating mirror, the intensity and the squeezing spectra of the transmitted field. We show that in comparison with a bare optomechanical cavity, the combination of the cavity energy shift due to the weak Kerr nonlinearity and increase in the intracavity photon number due to the nonlinear gain medium can increase the normal mode splitting in the displacement spectrum of the oscillating mirror. Our study demonstrates that at high temperatures, when the thermal fluctuations in the system are important, the optomechanical and nonlinearity-induced resonances are distinguishable in the output field spectrum. However, at low temperatures, the presence of both nonlinearities enhances the amplitude of the mechanical-mode contribution to the spectrum and leads to the occurrence of normal-mode splitting in the transmitted field spectrum even for low values of the input power. Also, at low temperatures, the Kerr-down conversion nonlinearity increases the radiation pressure contribution to the degree of squeezing of the transmitted field more than that of a bare optomechanical cavity or a nonlinear cavity (in the absence of optomechanical coupling). Furthermore, we find that for the blue-detuned laser the Kerr nonlinearity extends the domain of the stability of the system and leads to the normal-mode splitting of the movable mirror and noise reduction in the range of frequencies in which a bare cavity is not stable.     

Tunable double optomechanical induced transparency in an optomechanical system with Bose–Einstein condensate

We investigate the double optomechanically induced transparency (OMIT) of a weak problem field in a hybrid optomechanical system, composed of a Bose–Einstein condensate (BEC), a movable mirror and an optical cavity. Contrast to the single OMIT window in a traditional optomechanical system, the frequency difference between the BEC and the moving mirror in our system can lead to the splitting of the single OMIT window into two transparency windows. Interestingly, the splitting of the two windows varies near linearly with the frequency difference and is robust against the cavity decay. This property can be applied to detect the frequency of the movable mirror. Besides, the driving power and the BEC-cavity coupling strength play a key role in controlling the width of the two transparency windows.     

Coupling a small torsional oscillator to large optical angular momentum

Abstract

We propose a new configuration for realizing torsional optomechanics: an optically trapped windmill-shaped dielectric interacting with Laguerre–Gaussian cavity modes containing both angular and radial nodes. In contrast to existing schemes, our method can couple mechanical oscillators smaller than the optical beam waist to the in-principle unlimited orbital angular momentum that can be carried by a single photon, and thus generate substantial optomechanical interactions. Combining the advantages of small mass, large coupling, and low clamping losses, our work conceptually opens the way for the observation of quantum effects in torsional optomechanics. 10.1080/09500340.2013.778341-SUP0001 Supplementary data