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New Optomechanical Crystal Allows Confinement of Light and Sound
PBH writes "Physicists and engineers at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) have developed a nanoscale crystal that traps both light and sound. The interaction of light quanta (photons) and sound quanta (phomons) are so strong that they produce significant mechanical vibrations. 'Indeed, Painter points out, the interactions between sound and light in this device—dubbed an optomechanical crystal—can result in mechanical vibrations with frequencies as high as tens of gigahertz, or 10 billion cycles per second. Being able to achieve such frequencies, he explains, gives these devices the ability to send large amounts of information, and opens up a wide array of potential applications—everything from lightwave communication systems to biosensors capable of detecting (or weighing) a single macromolecule. It could also, Painter says, be used as a research tool by scientists studying nanomechanics. "These structures would give a mass sensitivity that would rival conventional nanoelectromechanical systems because light in these structures is more sensitive to motion than a conventional electrical system is."'"
Photoacoustic transducer (1998).
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...and maybe have a new kind of microwave antenna?
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
I'm not sure what applications extremely high frequency vibrations have, but I'm thinking that this could be used to make better quality audio speakers, microphones, ultrasound, sonar, etc.
If you have such fine control over vibrations, perhaps you could create fancier waveforms, for sound that has weird properties. Phased array sonar?
Constructive and destructive interference?
I own a pair of Bose noise-canceling headphones that I enjoy, so maybe that tech would be enhanced by these crystals. Or perhaps you could make sonic weapons by building up massive disruptor wave pulses
I'm trying to think of what high frequency synchrotron radiation makes possible through EM. The extremly short wavelengths allow imaging of very tiny objects like molecules. So would extremely short mechanical wavelengths allow extremely fine sonic imaging of... individual cells?
Am I the first to be dazzled by this?
When electron tubes gave way to transistors I sensed a revolution in progress, but it was hard to wrap my brain around a simple transistor being able to do such a variety of things with such a small energy cost.
Now this. My now aged brain struggles to comprehend and see the implications. I expect all to be revealed in this forum.
...omphaloskepsis often...
The concept of this material reminded me of Bob Shaw's science fiction story "The Light of Other Days" in which "slow glass" is used to capture scenes and images which could be released later. Interesting!
This is different than acousto-optics. There is no outside force here; all the movement is generated by the light itself. The miniscule amount of force from the light is enough to excite a resonance in the mechanical structure. The structure is both resonant to light and to acoustics. The two resonances are coupled because as the structure moves, the optical resonance shifts a little bit.
It is really cool work, but I haven't figured out what it'll be useful for.
I'm having trouble wrapping my head around this, despite (or because of?) a class I took in college in the late 70s. Photons I understand; light has characteristics of both waves and particles. That was covered in the class. However, phonons? Sound is simply the vibration of matter. There are no "subatomic sound particles". Where there is no matter there is no sound, unlike light. The vibration of an object IS sound. Nowhere in the wikipedia article about phonons does it say what they actually ARE and why modern physics says they're necessary.
Can anybody shed any light on this?
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