Researchers at NIST, the University of Maryland, and Caltech have developed a new method for optical wavelength conversion using cavity optomechanical systems. The technique involves interactions between radiation pressure and mechanical vibrations in a nanoscale cavity, allowing energy to be converted between optical and mechanical systems.
The team fabricated a silicon nitride microdisk resonator in NIST’s NanoFab, which simultaneously confines optical modes and a mechanical breathing mode. By interacting two whispering gallery optical modes with the mechanical breathing mode, they demonstrated wavelength conversion between the 1300 nm and 980 nm wavelength bands used in telecommunications, spanning 300 nm.
Current conversion efficiencies are limited to about 20% within the cavity and 0.5% for the device as a whole, primarily due to thermal noise. Future work will focus on improving efficiencies and reducing noise to enable operation with single photon states of light for quantum information processing applications.
Keywords: optomechanics, wavelength conversion, nanoscale cavity
