Optical manipulation of intrinsic localized vibrational energy in cantilever arrays

Optically-induced real-time impurity modes are used to shepherd intrinsic localized vibrational modes (discrete breathers) along micromechanical arrays via either attractive or repulsive interactions. Adding an electrode to the cantilever array provides control of the sign of lattice anharmonicity, hence allowing both hard and soft nonlinearities to be studied. A number of dynamical effects are demonstrated and explained, including the optical tweezing of localized vibrational energy in a nonlinear lattice.