LMI Seminar: Water-Walled Optofluidics and Water-Wave Lasers

Abstract:

We fabricate a new type of optofluidic micro-device with walls made strictly of water. Our water-walled devices can therefore co-host water waves and light waves and enable energy exchange between electromagnetic and capillary resonances.

Activation our opto-capillary cavity, while tuned to its non-resolved sideband, we experimentally demonstrate enhancement of the redder (Stokes) scattering of light from water waves; which allows excitation of water wave laser. This laser is similar to Brillouin lasers; but it relies on water waves instead of sound.

Going to the opposite sideband enables ripplon annihilation and (anti-Stokes) optical cooling of water waves.

In addition to extending Raman-lasers and -coolers to rely also on water waves, transforming solid walls to interfaces made of the liquid phase of matter makes water-walled devices a million times softer than what current solid-based technology allows. This softness implies a giant optical controllability and coolability that might, one day, allow optically cooling such devices toward their quantum ground state from room temperature.