Surface optomechanics: Calculating optically excited acoustical whispering gallery modes in microspheres

Abstract

Stimulated Brillouin scattering recently allowed experimental excitation of surface acoustic resonances in micro-devices, enabling vibration at rates in the range of 50 MHz to 12 GHz. The experimental availability of such mechanical whispering gallery modes in photonic-MEMS raises questions on their structure and spectral distribution. Here we calculate the form and frequency of such vibrational surface whispering gallery modes, revealing diverse types of surface vibrations including longitudinal, transverse, and Rayleigh-type deformations. We parametrically investigate these various modes by changing their orders in the azimuthal, radial, and polar directions to reveal different vibrational structures including mechanical resonances that are localized near the interface with the environment where they can sense changes in the surroundings.

10 pages, 5 figures, 1 table; journal paper - Optics Express, Accepted for pub. as of 20 Jun 2011

References in corpus (2)

• Brillouin Lasing with a CaF_2 Whispering Gallery Mode Resonator
• Stimulated optomechanical excitation of surface acoustic waves in a microdevice

Cited by in corpus (7)

• Nonlinear and Quantum Optics with Whispering Gallery Resonators
• Brillouin cavity optomechanics with microfluidic devices
• Noise and dynamics of stimulated Brillouin scattering microresonator lasers
• Brillouin Cooling
• Stability of Resonant Opto-Mechanical Oscillators
• Radio-Frequency-to-Optical Conversion using Acoustic and Optical Whispering Gallery Modes
• Stimulated Brillouin scattering from surface acoustic waves in sub-wavelength photonic microwires