Polarimetric analysis of stress anisotropy in nanomechanical silicon nitride resonators

We realise a circular gray-field polariscope to image stress-induced birefringence in thin (submicron thick) silicon nitride (SiN) membranes and strings. This enables quantitative mapping of the orientation of principal stresses and stress anisotropy, complementary to, and in agreement with, finite element modeling (FEM). Furthermore, using a sample with a well known stress anisotropy, we extract a new value for the photoelastic (Brewster) coefficient of silicon nitride, $C \approx (3.4~\pm~0.1)\times~10^{-6}~\mathrm{MPa}^{-1}$. We explore possible applications of the method to analyse and quality-control stressed membranes with phononic crystal pattern

Membrane-in-the-middle optomechanics with a soft-clamped membrane at milliKelvin temperatures

Soft-clamped silicon nitride membrane resonators reach coherence times tau in excess of 100 ms at milliKelvin bath temperatures. However, harnessing strong optomechanical coupling in dry dilution refrigerators remains challenging due to vibration issues and heating by optical absorption. Here, we propose to address these issues with an actuator-free optical cavity and mechanical resonator design, in which the cavity is mounted on a simple vibration-isolation platform. We observe dynamical backaction when the cavity is driven with a free-space optical beam stabilized close to the red sideband using a two-beam locking scheme. Finally, we characterize the effect of absorption heating on the coherence time, and find a scaling with the intracavity power P as tau proportional to P to the power of -(0.34+/-0.04)

Adiabatic elimination for multi-partite open quantum systems with non-trivial zero-order dynamics

International audienceWe provide model reduction formulas for open quantum systems consisting of a target component which weakly interacts with a strongly dissipative environment. The time-scale separation between the uncoupled dynamics and the interaction allows to employ tools from center manifold theory and geometric singular perturbation theory to eliminate the variables associated to the environment (adiabatic elimination) with high-order accuracy. An important specificity is to preserve the quantum structure: reduced dynamics in (p ositive) Lindblad form and coordinate mappings in Kraus form. We provide formulas of the reduced dynamics. Themain contributions of this paper are (i) to show how the decomposition of the environment into $K$ components enables its efficient treatment, avoiding the quantum curse of dimension; and (ii) to extend the results to the case where the target component is subject to Hamiltonian evolution at the fast time-scale. We apply our theory to a microwave superconducting quantum resonator subject to material losses, and we show that our reduced-order model can explain the transmission spectrum observed in a recent pump probe experiment

Population genetics of African Fruit Bats involved in ecology of Filoviridae (Ebola virus, Marburg virus) in West, Central and Southern Africa

peer reviewe

Refroidissement électromécanique et amplification paramétrique d'un oscillateur mécanique de très haut facteur de qualité

In this thesis, we have studied an ultrahigh quality factor mechanical oscillator coupled to a microwave cavity. We will present an original technique to probe the losses of planar microwave cavities, as well as a resolved sideband cooling technique to actively cool this mechanical oscillator using the microwave cavity. Finally, we will present some optimizations of this experiment which open the path towards the ground state cooling of the mechanical oscillator. Such a hybrid quantum system could be used as an on-chip quantum memory, able to store fragile quantum states generated by superconducting quantum circuits for coherence times approaching a second.Dans cette thèse, nous avons étudié un système mécanique de très haut facteur de qualité couplé à une cavité micro-onde supraconductrice. Nous présenterons une technique originale de caractérisation des pertes des cavités micro-ondes planaires, ainsi qu’une technique de refroidissement par bande latérale résolue utilisée pour refroidir activement cet oscillateur mécanique à l’aide de la cavité micro-onde. Enfin, nous présenterons des optimisations de cette expérience qui ouvrent la voie au refroidissement de l'oscillateur mécanique dans son état quantique fondamental. Un tel système hybride pourrait jouer le rôle de mémoire quantique sur puce, permettant de stocker les états quantiques non-gaussiens générés par des circuits quantiques supraconducteurs dans des vibrations mécaniques avec des temps de cohérence approchant la seconde

Refroidissement électromécanique et amplification paramétrique d'un oscillateur mécanique de très haut facteur de qualité

In this thesis, we have studied an ultrahigh quality factor mechanical oscillator coupled to a microwave cavity. We will present an original technique to probe the losses of planar microwave cavities, as well as a resolved sideband cooling technique to actively cool this mechanical oscillator using the microwave cavity. Finally, we will present some optimizations of this experiment which open the path towards the ground state cooling of the mechanical oscillator. Such a hybrid quantum system could be used as an on-chip quantum memory, able to store fragile quantum states generated by superconducting quantum circuits for coherence times approaching a second.Dans cette thèse, nous avons étudié un système mécanique de très haut facteur de qualité couplé à une cavité micro-onde supraconductrice. Nous présenterons une technique originale de caractérisation des pertes des cavités micro-ondes planaires, ainsi qu’une technique de refroidissement par bande latérale résolue utilisée pour refroidir activement cet oscillateur mécanique à l’aide de la cavité micro-onde. Enfin, nous présenterons des optimisations de cette expérience qui ouvrent la voie au refroidissement de l'oscillateur mécanique dans son état quantique fondamental. Un tel système hybride pourrait jouer le rôle de mémoire quantique sur puce, permettant de stocker les états quantiques non-gaussiens générés par des circuits quantiques supraconducteurs dans des vibrations mécaniques avec des temps de cohérence approchant la seconde

Ground state cooling of an ultracoherent electromechanical system

Cavity electromechanics relies on parametric coupling between microwave and mechanical modes to manipulate the mechanical quantum state, and provide a coherent interface between different parts of hybrid quantum systems. High coherence of the mechanical mode is of key importance in such applications, in order to protect the quantum states it hosts from thermal decoherence. Here, we introduce an electromechanical system based around a soft-clamped mechanical resonator with an extremely high Q-factor (>$10^9$) held at very low (30 mK) temperatures. This ultracoherent mechanical resonator is capacitively coupled to a microwave mode, strong enough to enable ground-state-cooling of the mechanics ($\bar{n}_\mathrm{min}= 0.76\pm 0.16$). This paves the way towards exploiting the extremely long coherence times ($t_\mathrm{coh}>100 ms) offered by such systems for quantum information processing and state conversion

Adiabatic elimination for multi-partite open quantum systems with non-trivial zero-order dynamics

International audienceWe provide model reduction formulas for open quantum systems consisting of a target component which weakly interacts with a strongly dissipative environment. The time-scale separation between the uncoupled dynamics and the interaction allows to employ tools from center manifold theory and geometric singular perturbation theory to eliminate the variables associated to the environment (adiabatic elimination) with high-order accuracy. An important specificity is to preserve the quantum structure: reduced dynamics in (p ositive) Lindblad form and coordinate mappings in Kraus form. We provide formulas of the reduced dynamics. Themain contributions of this paper are (i) to show how the decomposition of the environment into $K$ components enables its efficient treatment, avoiding the quantum curse of dimension; and (ii) to extend the results to the case where the target component is subject to Hamiltonian evolution at the fast time-scale. We apply our theory to a microwave superconducting quantum resonator subject to material losses, and we show that our reduced-order model can explain the transmission spectrum observed in a recent pump probe experiment

Strong Thermomechanical Noise Squeezing Stabilized by Feedback

Squeezing the quadrature noise of a harmonic oscillator used as a sensor can enhance its sensitivity in certain measurment schemes. The canonical approach, based on parametric modulation of the oscillation frequency, is usually limited to a squeezing of at most 3 dB. However, this can be overcome by additional stabilization of the anti-squeezed quadrature. Here, we apply this approach to highly-stressed silicon nitride membrane resonators, with effective masses of the order few nanograms and quality factors routinely exceeding 108, which hold promise for sensing applications in both the classical and quantum regimes. We benchmark their performance using either piezo or capacitive parametric modulation. We observe maximum thermomechanical squeezing by record-high 17 dB and 21 dB, respectively, and we argue that even larger values can be attained with minimal changes to the device design. Finally, we provide a full quantum theory of a combination of this approach with quantum-limited motion measurement and conclude that quantum squeezing is attainable at moderate cryogenic temperatures