We theoretically investigate phonon-photon interaction in cavities created in a phoxonic crystal slab constituted by a two-dimensional (2D) square array of holes in a silicon membrane. The structure without defects provides 2D band gaps for both electromagnetic and elastic waves. We consider two types of cavities, namely, an L3 cavity (a row of three holes is removed) and a cross-shape cavity, which both possess highly confined phononic and photonic localized modes suitable for enhancing their interaction. In our theoretical study, we take into account two mechanisms that contribute to optomechanical interaction, namely, the photoelastic and the interface motion effects. We show that, depending on the considered pair of photonic and phononic modes, the two mechanisms can have similar or very different magnitudes, and their contributions can be either in or out of phase. We find out that only acoustic modes with a specific symmetry are allowed to couple with photonic cavity modes. The coupling strength is quantified by two different methods. In the first method, we compute a direct estimation of coupling rates by overlap integrals, while in the second one, we analyze the temporal modulation of the resonant photonic frequency by the phonon-induced acoustic vibrational motion during one acoustic period. Interestingly, we obtain high optomechanical interaction, with the coupling rate reaching more than 2.4 MHz for some specific phonon-photon pairs.

• Received 13 July 2013

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevB.88.205410