Optomechanically induced stochastic resonance and chaos transfer between optical fields

Chaotic dynamics has been reported in many physical systems and has affected almost every field of science. Chaos involves hypersensitivity to the initial conditions of a system and introduces unpredictability into its output. Thus, it is often unwanted. Interestingly, the very same features make chaos a powerful tool to suppress decoherence, achieve secure communication and replace background noise in stochastic resonance—a counterintuitive concept that a system's ability to transfer information can be coherently amplified by adding noise. Here, we report the first demonstration of chaos-induced stochastic resonance in an optomechanical system, as well as the optomechanically mediated chaos transfer between two optical fields such that they follow the same route to chaos. These results will contribute to the understanding of nonlinear phenomena and chaos in optomechanical systems, and may find applications in the chaotic transfer of information and for improving the detection of otherwise undetectable signals in optomechanical systems.