BIOGRAPHY
Alejandro Grine is a 3rd year PhD graduate student in professor Ming Wu's group. He recieved his S.M. from MIT and his B.S. from the University of New Mexico both in Electrical Engineering. He has performed research on Avalanche Photodiodes and Microcavity Lasers.
He worked for Sandia National Laboratories from 2002-2012 where he was most recently as a Process Integration Engineer in the Heterojunction Bipolar Transistor program.
He expects to graduate in 2014.

Cavity Optomechanics Experimentation [BPN651]
Cavity optomechanics is a new and rapidly advancing field in which light is used to alter
the properties of a mechanical element. Our project specifically aims to confine both optical waves
and mechanical waves in a high quality microcavity. When enough light is built up in such a cavity,
the radiation pressure “pushes” on the walls of the cavity causing mechanical deformation and thus a
coupling to the cavity mechanical modes. Under the right conditions, both the light mode and
mechanical mode reach a resonance condition resulting in modulation of the light intensity exiting
the cavity. Though there may be numerous applications for cavity optomechanics, we seek to apply the
precisely modulated light as a replacement for bulky microwave oscillators in chip scale atomic
clocks. This work focuses on the RF photonic experimentation necessary to characterize and improve
microfabricated optomechanical devices for the target application.