Observation of limit torus and catastrophe point in optomechanical systems

Abstract Cavity optomechanical systems have received widespread attentions because they provide a novel platform for metrology, sensing, hybrid systems and quantum information processing. Their nonlinear dynamics has rich physics and plays an important role in the application scenarios. Previous works devoted to this subject have usually focused on the self-induced oscillation and chaos, whereas other parts of the rich nonlinear-dynamics picture are almost uncharted waters. In this study, we fill this gap and report the first experimental observation of limit-torus attractor, whose dynamics exhibits a torus-like trajectory in phase space. Moreover, we investigate the sharp decrease of oscillating amplitude along the up scanning transmission spectrum, referred to as catastrophe point, for the first time. The location of catastrophe point is independent of the pump power and the coupling distance. Our findings enrich the nonlinear dynamics in optomechanical systems, and open up new ways towards exploiting these systems as versatile building blocks in various applications including communication, quantum information processing, sensing and metrology.