Hybrid confinement of optical and mechanical modes in a bullseye optomechanical resonator

TL;DR

This paper introduces a novel hybrid optomechanical cavity design that independently controls optical and mechanical modes, achieving high quality factors and scalable fabrication on silicon photonics platforms.

Contribution

The authors present a new disk-based cavity with a radial mechanical bandgap, enabling independent control of optical and mechanical properties in a scalable silicon photonics platform.

Findings

Confines light and mechanical waves via distinct mechanisms

Achieves high mechanical quality factors and large optomechanical coupling

Compatible with commercial silicon photonics fabrication

Abstract

Optomechanical cavities have proven to be an exceptional tool to explore fundamental and technological aspects of the interaction between mechanical and optical waves. Such interactions strongly benefit from cavities with large optomechanical coupling, high mechanical and optical quality factors, and mechanical frequencies larger than the optical mode linewidth, the so called resolved sideband limit. Here we demonstrate a novel optomechanical cavity based on a disk with a radial mechanical bandgap. This design confines light and mechanical waves through distinct physical mechanisms which allows for independent control of the mechanical and optical properties. Our device design is not limited by unique material properties and could be easily adapted to allow large optomechanical coupling and high mechanical quality factors with other promising materials. Finally, our demonstration is based on devices fabricated on a commercial silicon photonics facility, demonstrating that our approach can be easily scalable.