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Cavity optomechanics with Anderson-localized optical modes

Confining photons in cavities enhances the interactions between light and matter. In cavity optomechanics, this enables a wealth of phenomena ranging from optomechanically induced transparency to macroscopic objects cooled to their motional ground state. Previous work in cavity optomechanics employed devices where ubiquitous structural disorder played no role beyond perturbing resonance frequencies and quality factors. More generally, the interplay between disorder, which must be described by statistical physics, and optomechanical effects has thus far been unexplored. Here, we demonstrate how sidewall roughness in air-slot photonic-crystal waveguides can induce sufficiently strong backscattering of slot-guided light to create Anderson-localized modes with quality factors as high as half a million and mode volumes that are below the diffraction limit. We observe how the interaction between these disorder-induced optical modes and in-plane mechanical modes of the slotted membrane is governed by a distribution of coupling rates, which can exceed $g_{\text{o}}/2π\sim 200$ kHz, leading to mechanical amplification up to self sustained oscillations via optomechanical backaction. Our work constitutes the first steps towards understanding optomechanics in the multiple-scattering regime and opens new perspectives for exploring complex systems with multitude mutually-coupled degrees of freedom.