Optically mediated hybridization between two mechanical modes

Phys Rev Lett. 2014 Jan 10;112(1):013602. doi: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.112.013602. Epub 2014 Jan 8.

Abstract

In this Letter we study a system consisting of two nearly degenerate mechanical modes that couple to a single mode of an optical cavity. We show that this coupling leads to nearly complete (99.5%) hybridization of the two mechanical modes into a bright mode that experiences strong optomechanical interactions and a dark mode that experiences almost no optomechanical interactions. We use this hybridization to transfer energy between the mechanical modes with 40% efficiency.