Abstract Optical forces are known to arise in a universal fashion in many and diverse physical settings. As such, they are successfully employed over a wide range of applications in areas like biophotonics, optomechanics and integrated optics. While inter-elemental optical forces in few-mode photonic networks have been so far systematically analyzed, little is known, if any, as to how they manifest themselves in highly multimoded optical environments. In this work, by means of statistical mechanics, we formally address this open problem in optically thermalized weakly nonlinear heavily multimode tight-binding networks. The outlined thermodynamic formulation allows one to obtain in an elegant manner analytical results for the exerted thermodynamic pressures in utterly complex arrangements-results that are either computationally intensive or impossible to obtain otherwise. Thus, we derive simple closed-form expressions for the thermodynamic optical pressures displayed among elements, which depend only on the internal energy as well as the coupling coefficients involved. In all cases, our theoretical results are in excellent agreement with numerical computations. Our study may pave the way towards a deeper understanding of these complex processes and could open up avenues in harnessing radiation forces in multimode optomechanical systems.
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Statistical mechanics of weakly nonlinear optical multimode gases
By utilizing notions from statistical mechanics, we develop a general and self-consistent theoretical framework capable of describing any weakly nonlinear optical multimode system involving conserved quantities. We derive the fundamental relations that govern the grand canonical ensemble through maximization of the Gibbs entropy at equilibrium. In this classical picture of statistical photo-mechanics, we obtain analytical expressions for the probability distribution, the grand partition function, and the relevant thermodynamic potentials. Our results universally apply to any other weakly nonlinear multimode bosonic system.
more » « less- Award ID(s):
- 1711230
- NSF-PAR ID:
- 10139599
- Publisher / Repository:
- Optical Society of America
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Optics Letters
- Volume:
- 45
- Issue:
- 7
- ISSN:
- 0146-9592; OPLEDP
- Format(s):
- Medium: X Size: Article No. 1651
- Size(s):
- Article No. 1651
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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