Strong optomechanical coupling of light and highly confined acoustic phonons in slot dual-beam phoxonic crystal cavities

Abstract

In this study, strong optomechanical (OM) coupling is proposed through the introduction of a slot in a dual-beam phoxonic crystal cavity structure. The structure can support a confined optical slot mode and localized phononic cavity modes to interact effectively through the slot surfaces. In addition to using conventional OM coupling rates for evaluating the coupling strength of photonic and phononic modes, we consider the optical forces induced by the optical slot mode to discuss the coupling between different mode pairs and the underlying mechanisms of the strong OM coupling. The optical field can induce radiation pressure and electrostrictive forces in the structure. We demonstrate that the radiation pressure dominates the coupling enhancement of photonic and phononic modes because of the slot, whereas the electrostrictive surface pressure plays a minor role and the electrostrictive body force has a negligible contribution. On the basis of the optical forces, we can then calculate the acoustic phonon spectrum through optical excitation. The spectrum indicates the appearance of strong OM coupling in the additional phononic cavity modes. The results suggest that the slot dual-beam cavity structure can be a promising choice for tailoring effective optical forces in micro- and nano-optomechanical systems for enhancing OM coupling.