In an article appearing on Nov. 11 in the journal Science,
researchers at EPFL and the Max Planck Institute of Quantum
Optics announce the discovery of a method for coupling photons
and mechanical vibrations that could have numerous applications
in telecommunications and quantum information technologies.
Controlling and modulating the flow of light is essential in
today's telecommunications-based society. Professor Tobias
Kippenberg and his team in EPFL's Laboratory of Photonics and
Quantum Measurements have discovered a novel way to couple light
and vibrations. Using this discovery, they built a device in
which a beam of light traveling through an optical
microresonator could be controlled by a second, stronger light
beam. The device thus acts like an optical transistor, in which
one light beam influences the intensity of another. Their
optical microresonator has two characteristics: first, it traps
light in a tiny glass structure, guiding the beam into a
circular pattern. Second, the structure vibrates, lik