Dresden 2011 – scientific programme
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ISS: Intersectional Sessions
ISS 2: Micro Mechanical Oscillator 2 (Q, TT)
ISS 2.1: Talk
Monday, March 14, 2011, 14:30–14:45, HSZ 02
Synchronization in optomechanical arrays — •Georg Heinrich1, Max Ludwig1, Jiang Qian2, Björn Kubala1, and Florian Marquardt1,3 — 1Institute for Theoretical Physics, University of Erlangen-Nuremberg, Germany — 2Department of Physics, LMU Munich, Germany — 3Max Planck Institute for the Science of Light, Erlangen, Germany
The motion of nano- and optomechanical systems can be coupled to electromagnetic fields. Beside the ultimate goal to measure and control the quantum state of mechanical motion, these systems allow to study elaborate dynamics due to the light-mechanics interaction. Recent developments have demonstrated systems comprising several coupled optical and vibrational modes, such as optomechanical crystals. Here we investigate the collective dynamics of arrays of coupled optomechanical cells, each consisting of a laser-driven optical and a mechanical mode. Beyond a certain threshold of the laser input power, each cell shows a Hopf bifurcation towards a regime of self-induced oscillations. We show that the phases of many such cells, even with different bare initial frequencies, can lock to each other, synchronizing the dynamics to a collective oscillation frequency. We present different regimes for the dynamics and describe the system in terms of an effective Kuramoto model. This allows to connect our optomechanical results to the general field of nonlinear science where synchronization constitutes an important, universal feature finding applications in fields ranging from physics over chemistry to biology.