Optomechanical crystals and their quantum optical applications

In the last several years, rapid advances have been made in the field of cavity optomechanics, in which the usually feeble radiation pressure force of light is used to manipulate (and precisely monitor) mechanical motion. These advances have moved the field from the multi-km interferometer of a gravitational wave observatory, to the optical table top, and now all the way down to a silicon microchip. In this talk I will describe these advances, and discuss our own work to realize radiation pressure within nanoscale structures in the form of coupled photonic and phononic crystals (dubbed optomechanical crystals).