Photothermal effect in macroscopic optomechanical systems with an intracavity nonlinear optical crystal

Abstract

Intracavity squeezing is a promising technique that may improve the sensitivity of gravitational wave detectors and cool optomechanical oscillators to the ground state. However, the photothermal effect may modify the occurrence of optomechanical coupling due to the presence of a nonlinear optical crystal in an optical cavity. We propose a novel method to predict the influence of the photothermal effect by measuring the susceptibility of the optomechanical oscillator and identifying the net optical spring constant and photothermal absorption rate. Using this method, we succeeded in precisely estimating parameters related to even minor photothermal effects, which could not be measured using a previously developed method.