Special Issue on Brillouin Scattering and Optomechanics

Superfluid Brillouin optomechanics

Optomechanical systems couple an electromagnetic cavity to a mechanical resonator which typically is a solid object. The range of phenomena accessible in these systems depends on the properties of the mechanical resonator and on the manner in which it couples to the cavity fields. In both respects, a mechanical resonator formed from superfluid liquid helium o ers several appealing features: low...

Guided acoustic and optical waves in silicon-on-insulator for Brillouin scattering and optomechanics

We numerically study silicon waveguides on silica showing that it is possible to simultaneously guide optical and acoustic waves in the technologically important silicon on insulator (SOI) material system. Thin waveguides, or fins, exhibit geometrically softened mechanical modes at gigahertz frequencies with phase velocities below the Rayleigh velocity in glass, eliminating acoustic radiation l...

Brillouin Optomechanics in Coupled Silicon Microcavities

The simultaneous control of optical and mechanical waves has enabled a range of fundamental and technological breakthroughs, from the demonstration of ultra-stable frequency reference devices, to the exploration of the quantum-classical boundaries in optomechanical laser-cooling experiments. More recently, such an optomechanical interaction has been observed in integrated nano-waveguides and mi...

Brillouin cavity optomechanics with microfluidic devices.

Cavity optomechanics allows the parametric coupling of phonon- and photon-modes in microresonators and is presently investigated in a broad variety of solid-state systems. Optomechanics with superfluids has been proposed as a path towards ultra-low optical- and mechanical-dissipation. However, there have been no optomechanics experiments reported with non-solid phases of matter. Direct liquid i...

Special Issue