Free-space optomechanical liquid probes using a twin-microbottle resonator

Abstract: Cavity optomechanics provides high-performance sensor technology, and the scheme is also applicable to liquid samples for biological and rheological applications. However, previously reported methods using fluidic capillary channels and liquid droplets are based on fixed-by-design structures and therefore do not allow an active free-space approach to the samples. Here, we demonstrate an alternate technique using a probe-based architecture with a twin-microbottle resonator. The probe consists of two microbottle optomechanical resonators, where one bottle (for detection) is immersed in liquid and the other bottle (for readout) is placed in air, which retains excellent detection performance through the high optical-Q (~107) of the readout bottle. The scheme allows the detection of thermomechanical motion of the detection bottle as well as its optomechanical sideband drive. This technique could lead to in-situ metrology at the target location in arbitrary media, and could be extended to ultrasensitive biochips and rheometers.