Observation of optomechanical coupling in a microbottle resonator

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates optomechanical coupling, resolved sidebands, and phonon lasing in a microbottle resonator, highlighting its potential for room-temperature quantum control and detailed optical-mechanical interactions.

Contribution

It reports the first observation of optomechanical effects in a microbottle resonator, including high-Q mechanical modes and mode splitting phenomena.

Findings

Mechanical Q factors up to 1.57*10^4 and 1.45*10^4.

Mechanical frequencies at 33.7 MHz and 58.9 MHz.

f_m*Q_m close to the theoretical limit for room-temperature sideband cooling.

Abstract

In this work, we report optomechanical coupling, resolved sidebands and phonon lasing in a solid-core microbottle resonator fabricated on a single mode optical fiber. Mechanical modes with quality factors (Q_m) as high as 1.57*10^4 and 1.45*10^4 were observed, respectively, at the mechanical frequencies f_m=33.7 MHz and f_m=58.9 MHz. The maximum f_m*Q_m~0.85*10^12 Hz is close to the theoretical lower bound of 6*10^12 Hz needed to overcome thermal decoherence for resolved-sideband cooling of mechanical motion at room temperature, suggesting microbottle resonators as a possible platform for this endeavor. In addition to optomechanical effects, scatter-induced mode splitting and ringing phenomena, which are typical for high-quality optical resonances, were also observed in a microbottle resonator.