The interaction between phonons and photons is investigated theoretically in a phoxonic cavity inside a corrugated nanobeam waveguide presenting band gaps for both electromagnetic and elastic waves. The structure is made by drilling periodic holes on a silicon nanobeam with lateral periodic stubs and the tapered cavity is constructed by changing gradually the geometrical parameters of both the holes and stubs. We show that this kind of cavity displays localized phonons and photons inside the gaps, which can enhance their interaction and also promotes the presence of many optical confined modes with high quality factor. Using the finite-element method, we demonstrate that with appropriate design of the tapering construction, one can control the cavity modes frequency without altering significantly the quality factor of the photonic modes. By changing the tapering rates over the lattice constants, we establish the possibility of shifting the phononic cavity modes frequency to place them inside the desired gap, which enhances their confinement and increases the mechanical quality factor while keeping the strength of the optomechanic coupling high. In our calculations, we take account of both mechanisms that contribute to the acousto-optic interaction, namely photoelastic and interface motion effects. We show that in our case, these two effects can contribute additively to give high coupling strength between phononic and photonic cavity modes. The calculations of the coupling coefficient which gives the phonon-photon coupling strength give values as high as 2 MHz while photonic cavity modes display quality factor of 10 5 and even values up to 3.4 MHz but with smaller photonic quality factors.

Using a semiclassical close-coupling approach, we have calculated electron capture, excitation and ionization cross sections for collisions of fully stripped hydrogen, helium and lithium ions with atomic hydrogen in the ground state and in all excited states up to n=3. The cross sections for collision energies between 1 and 100 keV/u are given in table form. Furthermore, we provide estimates of the accuracy of the cross sections. The set of data presented in this work represent the first complete and consistent quantum study of these collision systems and will find use in the modeling and diagnosis of thermonuclear fusion plasma reactors.

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We theoretically investigate phonon-photon interaction in cavities created in a phoxonic crystal slab constituted by a two-dimensional (2D) square array of holes in a silicon membrane. The structure without defects provides 2D band gaps for both electromagnetic and elastic waves. We consider two types of cavities, namely, an L3 cavity (a row of three holes is removed) and a cross-shape cavity, which both possess highly confined phononic and photonic localized modes suitable for enhancing their interaction. In our theoretical study, we take into account two mechanisms that contribute to optomechanical interaction, namely, the photoelastic and the interface motion effects. We show that, depending on the considered pair of photonic and phononic modes, the two mechanisms can have similar or very different magnitudes, and their contributions can be either in or out of phase. We find out that only acoustic modes with a specific symmetry are allowed to couple with photonic cavity modes. The coupling strength is quantified by two different methods. In the first method, we compute a direct estimation of coupling rates by overlap integrals, while in the second one, we analyze the temporal modulation of the resonant photonic frequency by the phonon-induced acoustic vibrational motion during one acoustic period. Interestingly, we obtain high optomechanical interaction, with the coupling rate reaching more than 2.4 MHz for some specific phonon-photon pairs.