Seán M. Meenehan

TL;DR: In this article, the design of an optomechanical crystal nanobeam cavity that combines finite-element simulation with numerical optimization is presented, and considers the optomchanical coupling arising from both moving dielectric boundaries and the photo-elastic effect.

TL;DR: An engineered defect in the crystal structure is used to localize optical and mechanical resonances in the band gap of the planar crystal, creating an artificial crystal structure that has a full phononic band gap for microwave X-band phonons and a two-dimensional pseudo-band gap for near-infrared photons.

TL;DR: An optical probe and single-photon detection is used to study the acoustic emission and absorption processes in a silicon nanomechanical resonator, and a measurement similar to that used by Hanbury Brown and Twiss is performed to measure correlations in the emitted phonons as the resonator undergoes a parametric instability formally equivalent to that of a laser.

TL;DR: In this article, the authors demonstrate diamond optomechanical crystals (OMCs), a device platform to enable such applications, wherein the co-localization of ∼200 THz photons and few to 10 GHz phonons in a quasi-periodic diamond nanostructure leads to coupling of an optical cavity field to a mechanical mode via radiation pressure.

TL;DR: Using pulsed optical excitation and read-out along with single-phonon counting techniques, the authors measured the transient backaction, heating, and damping dynamics of a nanoscale silicon optomechanical crystal cavity mounted in a dilution refrigerator at a base temperature of T_f ≈ 11