From membrane-in-the-middle to mirror-in-the-middle with a high-reflectivity sub-wavelength grating

Abstract

We demonstrate a "membrane in the middle" optomechanical system using a silicon nitride membrane patterned as a subwavelength grating. The grating has a reflectivity of over 99.8%, effectively creating two sub-cavities, with free spectral ranges of 6 GHz, optically coupled via photon tunneling. Measurements of the transmission and reflection spectra show an avoided crossing where the two sub-cavities simultaneously come into resonance, with a frequency splitting of 54 MHz. We derive expressions for the lineshapes of the symmetric and antisymmetric modes at the avoided crossing, and infer the grating reflection, transmission, absorption, and scattering through comparison with the experimental data.

7 pages, 4 figures

References in corpus (4)

• Strong dispersive coupling of a high finesse cavity to a micromechanical membrane
• Observation of Radiation Pressure Shot Noise on a Macroscopic Object
• Single-photon nonlinearities in two-mode optomechanics
• Dynamical scattering models in optomechanics: Going beyond the 'coupled cavities' model

Cited by in corpus (10)

• Cavity Quantum Electrodynamics with Frequency-Dependent Reflectors
• Phononically shielded photonic-crystal mirror membranes for cavity quantum optomechanics
• Enhanced Optomechanical Levitation of Minimally Supported Dielectrics
• Asymmetry-Based Quantum Backaction Suppression in Quadratic Optomechanics
• Profilometry and stress analysis of suspended nanostructured thin films
• Long-range optomechanical interactions in SiN membrane arrays
• Parametric amplification of light in a cavity with a moving dielectric membrane: Landau-Zener problem for the Maxwell field
• Full dynamics of two-membrane cavity optomechanics
• Coupled high-finesse optical Fabry-Perot microcavities
• Etch-Tuning and Design of Silicon Nitride Photonic Crystal Reflectors