Inverse-designed release-free optomechanical crystal with high photon-phonon coupling

• URL: http://arxiv.org/abs/2605.03910v1
• Date: Tue, 05 May 2026 16:07:30 GMT
• Title: Inverse-designed release-free optomechanical crystal with high photon-phonon coupling
• Abstract summary: High-performance optomechanical devices require strong photon-phonon coupling and tolerance to parasitic laser heating.<n>We design and experimentally demonstrate a release-free silicon optomechanical crystal with a record vacuum optomechanical coupling rate.<n>Results strengthen release-free optomechanical crystals as a platform for fast, low-noise classical and quantum optomechanics.
• Score: 0.0
• License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
• Abstract: Interactions between light and mechanics provide a powerful interface between optical and microwave-frequency signals, with applications spanning classical signal processing and quantum technologies. High-performance optomechanical devices require both strong photon-phonon coupling and tolerance to parasitic laser heating. Release-free optomechanical crystals provide improved thermal anchoring compared to suspended nanobeams, but have so far exhibited weaker vacuum optomechanical coupling rates, leaving a trade-off between coupling strength and thermal robustness. Here, we largely close this gap: we design and experimentally demonstrate a release-free silicon optomechanical crystal with a record vacuum optomechanical coupling rate of about $g_\text{OM} / (2 π) = 800$ kHz, comparable to suspended state-of-the-art devices. The resulting optomechanical scattering rate $Γ_\text{OM}/(2 π)= 1.1$ kHz is nearly twice that of previous release-free implementations. This performance is achieved by combining physics-guided human intuition with a multiphysics inverse-design algorithm introduced here for resonant optomechanical structures. Beyond the specific device demonstrated, the inverse-design framework is applicable to co-optimizing optical and mechanical resonances and eigenmodes more broadly. These results strengthen release-free optomechanical crystals as a platform for fast, low-noise classical and quantum optomechanics.

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