Abstract
Photothermal effects can alter the response of an optical cavity, for example, by inducing self-locking behavior or unstable anomalies. The consequences of these effects are often regarded as parasitic and generally cause limited operational performance of the cavity. Despite their importance, however, photothermal parameters are usually hard to characterize precisely. In this work, we use an optical cavity strongly coupled to photothermal effects to experimentally observe an optical back-action on the photothermal relaxation rate. This effect, reminiscent of the radiation-pressure-induced optical spring effect in cavity optomechanical systems, uses optical detuning as a fine control to change the photothermal relaxation process. The photothermal relaxation rate of the system can be accordingly modified by more than an order of magnitude. This approach offers an opportunity to obtain precise in situ estimations of the parameters of the cavity in a way that is compatible with a wide range of optical resonator platforms. Through this back-action effect, we are able to determine the natural photothermal relaxation rate and the effective thermal conductivity of cavity mirrors with unprecedented resolution.
Highlights
Light is a powerful tool in engineering the dynamics of the system with which it interacts
We report for the first time the explicit dependence of the natural relaxation rate of photothermal effects on cavity detuning, in analogy to how the mechanical frequency of a mirror is modified by the radiation pressure’s optical spring effect in optomechanical systems
The natural photothermal relaxation rate is generally slower than the mechanical response in many optomechanical systems
Summary
Light is a powerful tool in engineering the dynamics of the system with which it interacts. A well-known example is the optical spring [1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8] and damping effects [9,10,11,12,13,14] observed in optomechanical systems where a mechanical oscillator and an optical cavity are coupled via the radiation pressure force of light. The natural relaxation rate of photothermal effects in an optical cavity has a distinctive dependence on the detuning of the driving field. Even though it develops from a very different dynamical process, this phenomenon has similar properties to the radiation-pressure-induced optical spring. It can be employed to characterize photothermal parameters in a cavity with unprecedented resolution
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