Hexagonal microcavities have been proposed for a wide range of applications including microlasers, levitated optomechanics, quantum information science, and biosensors that make use of both Fabry-Perot and whispering gallery mode cavity resonances. Photothermal heating impacts a number of optical and mechanical properties of hexagonal microcavities based on the temperature dependence of quantities such as radiative lifetime, Young’s modulus, optical index of refraction, and the corresponding wavelength of cavity mode resonances. This talk will present recent results in both analytical and numerical modeling of photothermal heating in hexagonal cavities inspired by recent optomechanical levitation experiments in both aqueous and high-vacuum environments.
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