Phonon and Photon Lasing Dynamics in Optomechanical Cavities

TL;DR

This paper investigates the dynamics of phonon and photon lasing in optomechanical cavities, demonstrating simultaneous lasing with narrow linewidths and identifying distinct physical mechanisms in different regimes.

Contribution

It provides the first detailed exploration of linewidths in cavity optomechanical systems and experimentally demonstrates simultaneous phonon and photon lasing with ultra-narrow linewidths.

Findings

Achieved 5.4 kHz linewidth for phonon lasing at 6.22 GHz

Identified two regimes with different linewidth mechanisms

Demonstrated simultaneous phonon and photon lasing in silicon cavities

Abstract

Lasers differ from other light sources in that they are coherent, and their coherence makes them indispensable to both fundamental research and practical application. In optomechanical cavities, phonon and photon lasing is facilitated by the ability of photons and phonons to interact intensively and excite one another coherently. The lasing linewidths of both phonons and photons are critical for practical application. However, thus far, these linewidths have not been explored in detail in cavity optomechanical systems. This study investigates the underlying dynamics of lasing in optomechanical cavities and experimentally demonstrates simultaneous photon and phonon lasing with narrow linewidths in a silicon optomechanical crystal cavity. We find that the linewidths can be accounted for by two distinct physical mechanisms in two regimes, namely the normal regime and the reversed regime, where the intrinsic optical decay rate is either larger or smaller than the intrinsic mechanical decay rate. In the normal regime, an ultra-narrow spectral linewidth of 5.4 kHz for phonon lasing at 6.22 GHz can be achieved regardless of the linewidth of the pump light, while these results are counterintuitively unattainable for photon lasing in the reversed regime. These results pave the way towards harnessing the coherence of both photons and phonons in silicon photonic devices and reshaping their spectra, potentially opening up new technologies in sensing, metrology, spectroscopy, and signal processing, as well as in applications requiring sources that offer an ultra-high degree of coherence.