Controllable optical sideband generation by breaking mechanical Parity-Time symmetry

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates how breaking mechanical Parity-Time symmetry in an optomechanical system enables precise control over higher order optical sidebands using continuous wave laser drive, with potential applications in sensing and synchronization.

Contribution

It introduces a novel approach to control optical sidebands via mechanical PT symmetry breaking, highlighting the role of exceptional points in optical and mechanical energy manipulation.

Findings

Higher order sidebands emerge by breaking PT symmetry.

Number of sidebands controlled by adjusting cavity coupling.

Exceptional point induces synchronized sideband spectra.

Abstract

The interaction between light and mechanical vibrations in a cavity is often exploited to produce higher order sidebands (HOS) /combs, which are used in optical communication networks, spectroscopy, and others. Although a considerable study of optomechanically induced HOS has been done, its proper control and manipulation using only continuous wave (CW) laser drive are still to be explored. Here, we employed mechanical Parity-Time (PT) Symmetric structure with optically induced gain and loss. It has allowed us to manipulate the flow of mechanical energies (phonons) between the cavities, which has consequences on the optical response of the cavities. Based on our numerical investigations, we found that the higher order optical sidebands start to emerge by breaking PT symmetry. We precisely controlled the number of higher order sideband lines by adjusting the coupling rate between the cavities with fixed drive power. In addition, we observe that the Exceptional Point (EP) induces the formation of two synchronized higher order optical sideband spectra, which opens a promising EP based platform towards realization of optical readout of various mechanical synchronization phenomena, memory applications, sensing, synchronization of remote clock time and others.