Abstract
Abstract Light, sound, and microwave are important tools for many interdisciplinary applications in a multi-physical environment, and they usually are inefficient to be detected simultaneously in the same physical platform. However, at the microscopic scale, these waves can unexpectedly interact with the same microstructure through resonant enhancement, making it a unique hybrid micro-system for new applications across multiple physical channels. Here we experimentally demonstrate an optomechanical microdevice based on Brillouin lasing operation in an optical microcavity as a sensitive unit to sense external light, sound, and microwave signals in the same platform. These waves can induce modulations to the microcavity Brillouin laser (MBL) in a resonance-enhanced manner through either the pressure forces including radiation pressure force or thermal absorption, allowing several novel applications such as broadband non-photovoltaic detection of light, sound-light wave mixing, and deep-subwavelength microwave imaging. These results pave the way towards on-chip integrable optomechanical solutions for sensing, free-space secure communication, and microwave imaging.
Highlights
Sensors, like eyes and ears of human beings, are the most important sensing units to respond to events in the environment, which is highly complex across multi-physical domains including signals from light, sound, electromagnetic waves, thermal, magnetic fields as well as electrical fields, etc
We firstly demonstrate a microcavity Brillouin laser (MBL) based on a tapered-fiber-coupled microsphere assisted by its mechanical cantilever microstructure, which allows sensing the presence of the tiny radiation pressure force exerted from the external light, altering the lasing spectrum by precise optical actuation
Like optical-electrostriction-induced stimulated Brillouin scattering in optical fibers [26, 27], both backward and forward types of Brillouin lasers can be found in these optical microcavities [28]
Summary
Like eyes and ears of human beings, are the most important sensing units to respond to events in the environment, which is highly complex across multi-physical domains including signals from light, sound, electromagnetic waves, thermal, magnetic fields as well as electrical fields, etc. Recent emerging developments in remote sensing [1], biomedical photoacoustic imaging [2], dual-band radio and optical communications [3] pose strong demands to implement hybrid multiphysical and compact devices for simultaneously sensing multiple waves/fields across different physical regimes. Such a hybrid sensor has not been demonstrated due to the rigid multiphysical responses required by materials. Optomechanical devices have proved their ultrasensitive capability in mass sensing [4], force measurement [5], gas detection [6], as well as motion sensing [7, 8].
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