GaAs-based air-slot photonic crystal nanocavity for optomechanical oscillators

We theoretically investigate an optomechanical structure consisting of two parallel GaAs membranes with an air-slot type photonic crystal nanocavity. The optical cavity has a quality factor of 4.8 × 10⁶ at 1.52 μm and an extremely small modal volume of 0.015 of a cubic wavelength for the fundamental mode in a vacuum. The localized electric field near the air/dielectric-object boundary provides a large optomechanical coupling factor of ~990 GHz/nm. The fundamental mechanical mode resonance is 95 MHz and a quality factor is 83,800 at room temperature, nearly seven times higher than that for a similar Si-based structure. This high mechanical quality factor of a GaAs-based structure stems from low thermoelastic loss and leads to more effective optical control of nanomechanical oscillators.