title: Cavity optomechanical spring sensing of single molecules.
abstract: Label-free bio-sensing is a critical functionality underlying a variety of health- and security-related applications. Micro-/nano-photonic devices are well suited for this purpose and have emerged as promising platforms in recent years. Here we propose and demonstrate an approach that utilizes the optical spring effect in a high-Q coherent optomechanical oscillator to dramatically enhance the sensing resolution by orders of magnitude compared with conventional approaches, allowing us to detect single bovine serum albumin proteins with a molecular weight of 66 kDa at a signal-to-noise ratio of 16.8. The unique optical spring sensing approach opens up a distinctive avenue that not only enables biomolecule sensing and recognition at individual level, but is also of great promise for broad physical sensing applications that rely on sensitive detection of optical cavity resonance shift to probe external physical parameters.
authors.affiliation: Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Victoria, Victoria, British Columbia, Canada V8P 5C2.
authors.forename: Wenyan
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Yu
authors.affiliation: Institute of Optics, University of Rochester, Rochester, New York 14627, USA.
authors.forename: Wei C
authors.initials: WC
authors.lastname: Jiang
authors.affiliation: Institute of Optics, University of Rochester, Rochester, New York 14627, USA.|Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Rochester, Rochester, New York 14627, USA.
authors.forename: Qiang
authors.initials: Q
authors.lastname: Lin
authors.affiliation: Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Victoria, Victoria, British Columbia, Canada V8P 5C2.
authors.forename: Tao
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Lu
mesh_terms: D002021:Buffers; D007834:Lasers; D008863:Microspheres; D054118:Nanospheres; D055096:Optical Devices; D012822:Silicon Dioxide / Q000737:chemistry; D000072760:Single Molecule Imaging; D012996:Solutions
chemical_list: D002021:Buffers; D012996:Solutions; D012822:Silicon Dioxide