Making light jump

Making light jump: Photonic crystals on trampoline membranes for optomechanics experiments

Pinto Moura, J.P. (TU Delft QN/Groeblacher Lab)

van der Zant, H.S.J. (promotor)
Groeblacher, S. (copromotor)

Delft University of Technology

2019-04-03

Cavity optomechanics studies the interaction between mechanical resonators and optical cavities through radiation pressure forces and aims to harness this interaction for applications in the areas of high precision metrology, tests of fundamental quantum mechanics, or quantum information processing. For the most ambitious of these applications it is necessary that the mechanical resonator has a sufficiently high mechanical quality factor such that it can undergo at least a few coherent oscillations before interacting with incoherent thermal phonons. Furthermore, the optomechanical coupling must be large enough to make the interaction between optics and mechanics probable and, ideally, deterministic.
This work pursues both goals using a thin membrane in the middle (MIM) of an optical cavity. This is a common configuration in cavity optomechanics but most experiments to date have lowmechanical quality factors and optomechanical couplings.

Optical cavities
mechanical resonators
silicon nitride
optomechanics
photonic crystal slabs
optomechanical arrays

https://doi.org/10.4233/uuid:f090d58f-558c-47ed-8c9c-3152dadbc4ae

978-90-8593-390-8

Casimir PhD series 2019-06

Institutional Repository

doctoral thesis

© 2019 J.P. Pinto Moura