Optomechanical crystals
Optomechanical crystals
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DOI：
10.1038/nature08524
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发表时间：
2009-11-05
期刊：
影响因子：
64.8
通讯作者：
Painter, Oskar
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Eichenfield, Matt;Chan, Jasper;Painter, Oskar
材料的周期性产生有趣而有用的现象。应用于光的传播，周期性产生光子晶体（1），其可以被精确地设计用于诸如引导和分散光束（2，3），紧密地限制和共振捕获光（4）以及增强非线性光学相互作用（5）等应用。光子晶体也可以形成平面光波电路，用于集成光学和电学微系统（6）。在光子晶体中，主介质的周期性用于操纵光的性质，而声子晶体使用周期性来操纵机械振动（7-13）。正如在外延生长的垂直腔结构（14）和光子晶体光纤（15）中的拉曼散射的研究中所证明的，周期性结构中机械和光学模式的同时限制可以导致大大增强的光-物质相互作用。因此，合乎逻辑的下一步是创建既充当光子晶体又充当声子晶体的平面电路（16）：光机械晶体。在这里，我们描述的设计，制造和表征的平面，硅芯片为基础的光学机械晶体能够共同定位和强烈耦合200太赫兹光子和2千兆赫声子。这些平面光学机械晶体将光学和光子晶体的强大技术应用于声子晶体，提供了对机械振动的精密灵敏（接近量子极限）的光学测量，同时在大的技术相关频率范围内为光学提供了强非线性相互作用。
Periodicity in materials yields interesting and useful phenomena. Applied to the propagation of light, periodicity gives rise to photonic crystals(1), which can be precisely engineered for such applications as guiding and dispersing optical beams(2,3), tightly confining and trapping light resonantly(4), and enhancing nonlinear optical interactions(5). Photonic crystals can also be formed into planar lightwave circuits for the integration of optical and electrical microsystems(6). In a photonic crystal, the periodicity of the host medium is used to manipulate the properties of light, whereas a phononic crystal uses periodicity to manipulate mechanical vibrations(7-13). As has been demonstrated in studies of Raman-like scattering in epitaxially grown vertical cavity structures(14) and photonic crystal fibres(15), the simultaneous confinement of mechanical and optical modes in periodic structures can lead to greatly enhanced light-matter interactions. A logical next step is thus to create planar circuits that act as both photonic and phononic crystals(16): optomechanical crystals. Here we describe the design, fabrication and characterization of a planar, silicon-chip-based optomechanical crystal capable of co-localizing and strongly coupling 200-terahertz photons and 2-gigahertz phonons. These planar optomechanical crystals bring the powerful techniques of optics and photonic crystals to bear on phononic crystals, providing exquisitely sensitive (near quantum-limited), optical measurements of mechanical vibrations, while simultaneously providing strong nonlinear interactions for optics in a large and technologically relevant range of frequencies.