Summary

Micro-electro-mechanical systems (MEMS) are micron-scale machines used in everything from accelerometers to digital projectors. In particular, mechanically resonating MEMS are critical to many everyday gadgets; but usually we prefer to design devices with /linear/ vibrations. Physicists working in optics have illustrated a wide variety of interesting effects involving /nonlinear/ wave mechanics, including generation of optical solitons and frequency combs. The goal of this project is to explore the feasibility of similar nonlinear mechanical wave effects in micro-resonators.