Microfiber Mechanical Resonator for Optomechanics

Optomechanics is a promising field with important applications in ultrasensitive sensing and quantum information processing. A variety of micromechanical resonators are proposed and demonstrated for expanding the applications of optomechanical technologies. In this paper, we report a novel microfiber mechanical resonator. By designing abrupt junctions between the microfiber and single mode fibers and imposing high axial stress in the resonator, the clamping loss is decreased effectively and the resonator material’s intrinsic dissipation is also diluted. Ringdown measurements at room temperature show that the quality factors Q m of the fundamental and higher-order mechanical modes of the microfiber resonators exceed 10 5 to yield the highest mechanical f × Q m products (>10 10 Hz) yet reported for fiber-optic mechanical resonators. Moreover, employing the microfiber as a vibrating beam, the mass of the resonator is at least 1 order of magnitude less than that of the reported fiber-optic resonators with a similar f × Q m product. The proposed mechanical resonator is a promising candidate for optomechanics and provides an alternative mechanism for optical fiber sensing and communication systems.