Optomechanical interactions in two-dimensional Si and GaAs phoXonic cavities

Abstract

We investigate theoretically the optomechanical interactions inside cavities created in two-dimensional infinite phoXonic crystals constituted by a square array of holes in silicon (Si) and gallium arsenide (GaAs) matrices. The cavity is simply obtained by removing one hole in the perfect crystal. Our calculations take into account two mechanisms that contribute to the optomechanical coupling, namely the bulk photoelastic effect and the deformations of the interfaces due to the acoustic strain. The coupling strength is estimated by two different methods, modulation of the photonic mode frequency during one period of the acoustic oscillations and calculation of the optomechanical coupling rate. We discuss the important roles of the symmetry and degeneracy of the modes to discriminate which ones are not able to interact efficiently. Calculations in Si and GaAs crystals at different optical wavelengths emphasize the dependence of the photoelastic contribution to the optomechanical interaction as a function of material and wavelength, especially owing to the significant variation of the photoelastic coefficients near the semiconductor band gap.