2,636 research outputs found
Measurement and control of a mechanical oscillator at its thermal decoherence rate
In real-time quantum feedback protocols, the record of a continuous
measurement is used to stabilize a desired quantum state. Recent years have
seen highly successful applications in a variety of well-isolated
micro-systems, including microwave photons and superconducting qubits. By
contrast, the ability to stabilize the quantum state of a tangibly massive
object, such as a nanomechanical oscillator, remains a difficult challenge: The
main obstacle is environmental decoherence, which places stringent requirements
on the timescale in which the state must be measured. Here we describe a
position sensor that is capable of resolving the zero-point motion of a
solid-state, nanomechanical oscillator in the timescale of its thermal
decoherence, a critical requirement for preparing its ground state using
feedback. The sensor is based on cavity optomechanical coupling, and realizes a
measurement of the oscillator's displacement with an imprecision 40 dB below
that at the standard quantum limit, while maintaining an
imprecision-back-action product within a factor of 5 of the Heisenberg
uncertainty limit. Using the measurement as an error signal and radiation
pressure as an actuator, we demonstrate active feedback cooling (cold-damping)
of the 4.3 MHz oscillator from a cryogenic bath temperature of 4.4 K to an
effective value of 1.10.1 mK, corresponding to a mean phonon number of
5.30.6 (i.e., a ground state probability of 16%). Our results set a new
benchmark for the performance of a linear position sensor, and signal the
emergence of engineered mechanical oscillators as practical subjects for
measurement-based quantum control.Comment: 24 pages, 10 figures; typos corrected in main text and figure
Optomechanical sideband cooling of a micromechanical oscillator close to the quantum ground state
Cooling a mesoscopic mechanical oscillator to its quantum ground state is
elementary for the preparation and control of low entropy quantum states of
large scale objects. Here, we pre-cool a 70-MHz micromechanical silica
oscillator to an occupancy below 200 quanta by thermalizing it with a 600-mK
cold 3He gas. Two-level system induced damping via structural defect states is
shown to be strongly reduced, and simultaneously serves as novel thermometry
method to independently quantify excess heating due to the cooling laser. We
demonstrate that dynamical backaction sideband cooling can reduce the average
occupancy to 9+-1 quanta, implying that the mechanical oscillator can be found
(10+- 1)% of the time in its quantum ground state.Comment: 11 pages, 5 figure
Optomechanical transduction of an integrated silicon cantilever probe using a microdisk resonator
Sensitive transduction of the motion of a microscale cantilever is central to
many applications in mass, force, magnetic resonance, and displacement sensing.
Reducing cantilever size to nanoscale dimensions can improve the bandwidth and
sensitivity of techniques like atomic force microscopy, but current optical
transduction methods suffer when the cantilever is small compared to the
achievable spot size. Here, we demonstrate sensitive optical transduction in a
monolithic cavity-optomechanical system in which a sub-picogram silicon
cantilever with a sharp probe tip is separated from a microdisk optical
resonator by a nanoscale gap. High quality factor (Q ~ 10^5) microdisk optical
modes transduce the cantilever's MHz frequency thermally-driven vibrations with
a displacement sensitivity of ~ 4.4x10^-16 m\sqrt[2]{Hz} and bandwidth > 1 GHz,
and a dynamic range > 10^6 is estimated for a 1 s measurement.
Optically-induced stiffening due to the strong optomechanical interaction is
observed, and engineering of probe dynamics through cantilever design and
electrostatic actuation is illustrated
Optical read out and feedback cooling of a nanostring optomechanical cavity
Optical measurement of the motion of a 940 kHz mechanical resonance of a
silicon nitride nanostring resonator is demonstrated with a read out noise
imprecision reaching 37 dB below that of the resonator's zero-point
fluctuations. Via intensity modulation of the optical probe laser, radiation
pressure feedback is used to cool and damp the mechanical mode from an initial
room temperature occupancy of (K)
down to a phonon occupation of , representing a
mode temperature of mK. The five decades of cooling is enabled
by the system's large single-photon cooperativity and high
quantum efficiency of optical motion detection ().Comment: 13 pages, 13 figure
Observation and interpretation of motional sideband asymmetry in a quantum electro-mechanical device
Quantum electro-mechanical systems offer a unique opportunity to probe
quantum noise properties in macroscopic devices, properties which ultimately
stem from the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle. A simple example of this is
expected to occur in a microwave parametric transducer, where mechanical motion
generates motional sidebands corresponding to the up and down
frequency-conversion of microwave photons. Due to quantum vacuum noise, the
rates of these processes are expected to be unequal. We measure this
fundamental imbalance in a microwave transducer coupled to a radio-frequency
mechanical mode, cooled near the ground state of motion. We also discuss the
subtle origin of this imbalance: depending on the measurement scheme, the
imbalance is most naturally attributed to the quantum fluctuations of either
the mechanical mode or of the electromagnetic field
Testing collapse models with levitated nanoparticles: the detection challenge
We consider a nanoparticle levitated in a Paul trap in ultrahigh cryogenic
vacuum, and look for the conditions which allow for a stringent
noninterferometric test of spontaneous collapse models. In particular we
compare different possible techniques to detect the particle motion. Key
conditions which need to be achieved are extremely low residual pressure and
the ability to detect the particle at ultralow power. We compare three
different detection approaches based respectively on a optical cavity, optical
tweezer and a electrical readout, and for each one we assess advantages,
drawbacks and technical challenges
High frequency GaAs nano-optomechanical disk resonator
Optomechanical coupling between a mechanical oscillator and light trapped in
a cavity increases when the coupling takes place in a reduced volume. Here we
demonstrate a GaAs semiconductor optomechanical disk system where both optical
and mechanical energy can be confined in a sub-micron scale interaction volume.
We observe giant optomechanical coupling rate up to 100 GHz/nm involving
picogram mass mechanical modes with frequency between 100 MHz and 1 GHz. The
mechanical modes are singled-out measuring their dispersion as a function of
disk geometry. Their Brownian motion is optically resolved with a sensitivity
of 10^(-17)m/sqrt(Hz) at room temperature and pressure, approaching the quantum
limit imprecision.Comment: 7 pages, 3 figure
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