title: Optomechanical and photothermal interactions in suspended photonic crystal membranes.
abstract: We present here an optomechanical system fabricated with novel stress management techniques that allow us to suspend an ultrathin defect-free silicon photonic-crystal membrane above a Silicon-on-Insulator (SOI) substrate with a gap that is tunable to below 200 nm. Our devices are able to generate strong attractive and repulsive optical forces over a large surface area with simple in- and out- coupling and feature the strongest repulsive optomechanical coupling in any geometry to date (gOM/2π ≈65 GHz/nm). The interplay between the optomechanical and photo-thermal-mechanical dynamics is explored, and the latter is used to achieve cooling and amplification of the mechanical mode, demonstrating that our platform is well-suited for potential applications in low-power mass, force, and refractive-index sensing as well as optomechanical accelerometry.
authors.affiliation: School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA.
authors.forename: David
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Woolf
authors.forename: Pui-Chuen
authors.initials: PC
authors.lastname: Hui
authors.forename: Eiji
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Iwase
authors.forename: Mughees
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Khan
authors.forename: Alejandro W
authors.initials: AW
authors.lastname: Rodriguez
authors.forename: Parag
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Deotare
authors.forename: Irfan
authors.initials: I
authors.lastname: Bulu
authors.forename: Steven G
authors.initials: SG
authors.lastname: Johnson
authors.forename: Federico
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Capasso
authors.forename: Marko
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Loncar
mesh_terms: D003460:Crystallization; D004867:Equipment Design; D019544:Equipment Failure Analysis; D006358:Hot Temperature; D008027:Light; D008567:Membranes, Artificial; D055617:Micro-Electrical-Mechanical Systems / Q000295:instrumentation*; D012031:Refractometry / Q000295:instrumentation*; D012825:Silicon / Q000737:chemistry*; D014159:Transducers
chemical_list: D008567:Membranes, Artificial; D012825:Silicon