Fig. 1: Concept design for dissipative optomechanical coupled cavity.

a Scattering mechanisms in an optomechanical system with both dispersive and dissipative couplings. Photons arriving through a waveguide (mode density ρ_wg - light green) can be inelastically scattered into the cavity field depicted by the light blue/red tones. A similar process occurs for cavity pump photons (mode density ρ_c - dark green), generating sidebands in dark blue/red. b Diagram for coupled optomechanical cavities with an asymmetric loss induced by the waveguide. The physical response of the system, depicted on the right, necessarily includes a mechanically dependent extrinsic coupling for both supermodes. c Frequency splitting in strongly coupled optical cavities and d Supermodes' losses as functions of the frequency detuning between the “bare" resonators, Δω(x). e Transmission spectra for different detuning configurations. The trace colors identify the supermodes as in (c) and (d). Both their extinction and frequency are sensitive to the mechanically-dependent detuning, as represented by vertical and horizontal double-headed arrows, respectively.