Hard excitation mode of a system with optomechanical instability.

Systems with strong photon-phonon interaction and optomechanical instability are perspective for the generation of coherent phonons and photons. We predict the existence of a hard mode of excitation in such systems when a jump-like increase in the photon intensity takes place at the generation threshold. We derive an analytical expression that defines conditions for such an increase. We demonstrate that the hard excitation mode in systems with optomechanical instability arises due to an additional phase condition for the existence of a nonzero solution. We propose to use systems with optomechanical instability operating in the hard excitation mode to create highly sensitive sensors.