Magnetic damping of a carbon nanotube NEMS resonator

A suspended, doubly clamped single wall carbon nanotube is characterized at cryogenic temperatures. We observe specific switching effects in dc-current spectroscopy of the embedded quantum dot. These have been identified previously as nano-electromechanical self-excitation of the system, where positive feedback from single electron tunneling drives mechanical motion. A magnetic field suppresses this effect, by providing an additional damping mechanism. This is modeled by eddy current damping, and confirmed by measuring the resonance quality factor of the rf-driven nano-electromechanical resonator in an increasing magnetic field.Comment: 8 pages, 3 figure

Strong feedback and current noise in nanoelectromechanical systems

We demonstrate the feasibility of a strong feedback regime for a single-electron tunneling device weakly coupled to an underdamped single-mode oscillator. In this regime, mechanical oscillations are generated and the current is strongly modified whereas the current noise is parametrically big with respect to the Poisson value. This regime requires energy dependence of the tunnel amplitudes. For sufficiently fast tunnel rates the mechanical contribution to current noise can exceed the Poisson value even beyond the strong feedback regime.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figure