Optical cavities have shown their capability in constructing high-precision sensors, laser sources, and other optical components. After introducing optical radiation force into the optical cavities, the researchers opened a new era for cavity optomechanics. Cavity optomechanics has attracted extensive attention in recent years, creating opportunities for high-precision sensing, communications, and quantum information processing, as well as for fundamental science, e.g., macroscopic quantum effects in mechanical systems and gravitational wave detection. Various interesting phenomena, such as bistable effects, chaos, frequency combs, solitons, induced by nonlinear optomechanical coupling, have also been considered recently.
This Research Topic will include the recent theoretical and experimental progress and the related applications for the field of cavity optomechanics. Some recent studies about cavity optomechanics focus on the “cooling” regime, where the cavity is driven by a laser red-detuned from the cavity resonance and thus will absorb phonons from mechanical modes. In this regime, the quantum effects in optomechanics are extensively studied, such as generating nonclassical states, quantum entanglement, and ground-state cooling of mechanical oscillators. Extensive research has also been recently devoted to the “heating” regime of cavity optomechanics. In this regime, a photon blue-detuned from the cavity resonance will emit a phonon into the mechanical modes when entering the cavity. Various phenomena have been observed in this regime, such as phonon lasing, in which coherent mechanical vibrations are excited through optical pumping. For strong pumps, it is also possible to observe nonlinear optical effects, such as chaos, optical solitons, and surface-acoustic-wave frequency combs.
This Research Topic will include the original research and review articles related, but not limited, to the topics:
• Cooling of optomechanical resonators;
• Quantum effects in optomechanics;
• Optomechanical chaos;
• Solitons in optomechanical systems;
• Microwave-to-optical conversion by optomechanics;
• Applications of cavity optomechanics in, e.g., quantum information and sensing.
Optical cavities have shown their capability in constructing high-precision sensors, laser sources, and other optical components. After introducing optical radiation force into the optical cavities, the researchers opened a new era for cavity optomechanics. Cavity optomechanics has attracted extensive attention in recent years, creating opportunities for high-precision sensing, communications, and quantum information processing, as well as for fundamental science, e.g., macroscopic quantum effects in mechanical systems and gravitational wave detection. Various interesting phenomena, such as bistable effects, chaos, frequency combs, solitons, induced by nonlinear optomechanical coupling, have also been considered recently.
This Research Topic will include the recent theoretical and experimental progress and the related applications for the field of cavity optomechanics. Some recent studies about cavity optomechanics focus on the “cooling” regime, where the cavity is driven by a laser red-detuned from the cavity resonance and thus will absorb phonons from mechanical modes. In this regime, the quantum effects in optomechanics are extensively studied, such as generating nonclassical states, quantum entanglement, and ground-state cooling of mechanical oscillators. Extensive research has also been recently devoted to the “heating” regime of cavity optomechanics. In this regime, a photon blue-detuned from the cavity resonance will emit a phonon into the mechanical modes when entering the cavity. Various phenomena have been observed in this regime, such as phonon lasing, in which coherent mechanical vibrations are excited through optical pumping. For strong pumps, it is also possible to observe nonlinear optical effects, such as chaos, optical solitons, and surface-acoustic-wave frequency combs.
This Research Topic will include the original research and review articles related, but not limited, to the topics:
• Cooling of optomechanical resonators;
• Quantum effects in optomechanics;
• Optomechanical chaos;
• Solitons in optomechanical systems;
• Microwave-to-optical conversion by optomechanics;
• Applications of cavity optomechanics in, e.g., quantum information and sensing.