Otabe Sotatsu, Usukura Wataru, Suzuki Kaido, Komori Kentaro, Michimura Yuta, Harada Ken-Ichi, Somiya Kentaro
Department of Physics, Tokyo Institute of Technology, Meguro, Tokyo 152-8550, Japan.
Institute of Innovative Research, Tokyo Institute of Technology, Yokohama, Kanagawa 226-8503, Japan.
Phys Rev Lett. 2024 Apr 5;132(14):143602. doi: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.132.143602.
We propose and experimentally demonstrate the generation of enhanced optical springs using the optical Kerr effect. A nonlinear optical crystal is inserted into a Fabry-Perot cavity with a movable mirror, and a chain of second-order nonlinear optical effects in the phase-mismatched condition induces the Kerr effect. The optical spring constant is enhanced by a factor of 1.6±0.1 over linear theory. To our knowledge, this is the first realization of optomechanical coupling enhancement using a nonlinear optical effect, which has been theoretically investigated to overcome the performance limitations of linear optomechanical systems. The tunable nonlinearity of demonstrated system has a wide range of potential applications, from observing gravitational waves emitted by binary neutron star postmerger remnants to cooling macroscopic oscillators to their quantum ground state.
