Brillouin Scattering Induced Transparency for Microscale Rotation Sensing

The main objective for this project was to explore the physics of Brillouin opto-acoustic scattering in microresonators with the goals of manipulating optical responses and for developing novel physical sensors. Specifically, we aimed to study the measurement of rotation using optical response of Brillouin optomechanical systems through Brillouin Scattering Induced Transparency BSIT measurements. The AFOSR support that we received through this grant, enabled significant progress on both experimental and theoretical aspects of the above goals. We demonstrated that Brillouin optomechanical coupling within microresonators can be enhanced by orders-of-magnitude by surface interactions between light and sound. We also demonstrated the first optomechanical system that achieves complete optical isolation. We advanced the understanding of Brillouin cooling, in both linear and resonant systems. We demonstrated the dynamic suppression of disorder-induced phonon scattering by breaking time reversal symmetry using Brillouin scattering. The stage is now set for tremendous advances in Brillouin-scattering based microsensors.