Putting Mechanics Into Photonics

Summary form only given. Nanomechanical devices and photonic devices are promising alternatives to today´s electronic devices. Electrostatic interaction is fundamental to the operation of electronic devices. Unlike electrons, photons (or phonons) are non-charged bosons and tend not to interact with each other. This enables very high operation bandwidth but essentially makes it hard to build logic devices. A new interaction mechanism between them is yet to be discovered to advance the state-of-the-art development of solid state devices. We believe optical force is such a candidate. In macroscopic world, optical forces are generally thought to be too weak for practical use. This picture changes when applied to lightweight nanoscale devices. In this talk, we demonstrate that significant optical force can be produced by a single pass of light in a silicon photonic circuit. This optical force, originated from lateral photon confinement rather than from momentum transfer, is applied in a planar geometry and offers high scalability. Control and harnessing optical force will allow solid state devices to operate under this new physical principle, and open doors to non-charge based devices.