Ming C. Wu (Advisor)

Over the past few decades, semiconductor lasers have relentlessly followed the path towards miniaturization. Smaller lasers are more energy efficient, are cheaper to make, and open up new applications in sensing and displays, among many other things. Yet, up until recently, there was a fundamental problem with making lasers smaller: purely semiconductor lasers couldn't be made smaller than the diffraction limit of light.

In recent years, however, metal-based lasers have been demonstrated in the nanoscale that have shattered the diffraction limit. As optical materials, metals can be...

Cavity Optomechanical oscillators (OMOs) rely on photon radiation pressure to induce harmonic mechanical motion of a micron-scale light resonator. Unlike most oscillators, optomechanical oscillators require only CW input light without the need for electronic feedback and so hold promise for their novelty. In an optical cavity of sufficient quality factor, the transduction from photons to phonons can be quite efficient as we characterized optomechanical cavities which only required 17 microwatt input optical power to induce mechanical oscillation. The question then remains whether OMOs can...