Measuring Frequency Fluctuations in Nonlinear Nanomechanical Resonators

Maillet, Olivier; Zhou, Xin; Gazizulin, R. R.; Ilic, Rob; Parpia, J. M.; Bourgeois, Olivier; Fefferman, Andrew; Collin, Eddy

doi:10.1021/acsnano.8b01634

Cited by 28 publications

(32 citation statements)

References 33 publications

(141 reference statements)

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“…The behaviour of σ ph is completely different from frequency and damping noises measured at the same time. They both display true 1/f 2 spectra (with no low-frequency cutoff observed), and shall thus be characterised for a given time span (so-called Allan deviation) 50 . Their temperature dependence is similar and reversed from the one of phonon population, see inset of Fig.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

A macroscopic object passively cooled into its quantum ground state of motion beyond single-mode cooling

et al. 2021

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The nature of the quantum-to-classical crossover remains one of the most challenging open question of Science to date. In this respect, moving objects play a specific role. Pioneering experiments over the last few years have begun exploring quantum behaviour of micron-sized mechanical systems, either by passively cooling single GHz modes, or by adapting laser cooling techniques developed in atomic physics to cool specific low-frequency modes far below the temperature of their surroundings. Here instead we describe a very different approach, passive cooling of a whole micromechanical system down to 500 μK, reducing the average number of quanta in the fundamental vibrational mode at 15 MHz to just 0.3 (with even lower values expected for higher harmonics); the challenge being to be still able to detect the motion without disturbing the system noticeably. With such an approach higher harmonics and the surrounding environment are also cooled, leading to potentially much longer mechanical coherence times, and enabling experiments questioning mechanical wave-function collapse, potentially from the gravitational background, and quantum thermodynamics. Beyond the average behaviour, here we also report on the fluctuations of the fundamental vibrational mode of the device in-equilibrium with the cryostat. These reveal a surprisingly complex interplay with the local environment and allow characteristics of two distinct thermodynamic baths to be probed.

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

A macroscopic object passively cooled into its quantum ground state of motion beyond single-mode cooling

et al. 2021

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“…It does not alter the area A measurement, but does corrupt both frequency and linewidth estimates. This noise comes in with a 1/ftype component [52,53], plus telegraph-like jumps [56]. It leads to the finite error bars in Fig.…”

Section: In-equilibrium Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The low temperature properties of NEMS are described within the tunneling model of Two-Level-Systems (TLSs): for damping, frequency shifts, and phase fluctuations [30,50,52]. It is thus natural to consider strongly coupled individual TLSs as the most probable source of our problems.…”

Section: Unstable Drive Force Featuresmentioning

confidence: 99%

On-chip Thermometry for Microwave Optomechanics Implemented in a Nuclear Demagnetization Cryostat

et al. 2019

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We report on microwave optomechanics measurements performed on a nuclear adiabatic demagnetization cryostat, whose temperature is determined by accurate thermometry from below 500 µK to about 1 Kelvin. We describe a method for accessing the on-chip temperature, building on the blue-detuned parametric instability and a standard microwave setup. The capabilities and sensitivity of both the experimental arrangement and the developed technique are demonstrated with a very weakly coupled silicon-nitride doubly-clamped beam mode of about 4 MHz and a niobium on-chip cavity resonating around 6 GHz. We report on an unstable intrinsic driving force in the coupled microwave-mechanical system acting on the mechanics that appears below typically 100 mK. The origin of this phenomenon remains unknown, and deserves theoretical input. It prevents us from performing reliable experiments below typically 10-30 mK; however no evidence of thermal decoupling is observed, and we propose that the same features should be present in all devices sharing the microwave technology, at different levels of strengths. We further demonstrate empirically how most of the unstable feature can be annihilated, and speculate how the mechanism could be linked to atomic-scale two level systems. The described microwave/microkelvin facility is part of the EMP platform, and shall be used for further experiments within and below the millikelvin range.

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“…, we present mass spectra for 500 gold nanoparticles with a nominal diameter of 20 nm (12% dispersion in size) obtained by projecting the individual mass distributions onto the mass and diameter planes. For the mass measurements, the peak with maximum probability density is found at 57 25. MDa which corresponds to a diameter of 20.84 nm.…”

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confidence: 97%

“…Many of the work in the past used the openloop response of nonlinear resonators, [21][22][23][24] including a recent technique for accurate characterization of frequency fluctuations in the nonlinear regime. 25 However, continuously sweeping the frequency in the open-loop cannot be applied effectively to the sensing of abrupt changes induced by single analytes for two reasons. First, open-loop technique requires judicious re-setting of the sweep parameters every time after a particle adsorption.…”

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confidence: 99%