Near-field cavity optomechanical coupling in a compound semiconductor nanowire

Abstract

A III-V compound semiconductor nanowire is an attractive material for a novel hybrid quantum interface that interconnects photons, electrons, and phonons through a wavelength-tunable quantum structure embedded in its free-standing structure. In such a nanomechanical element, however, a challenge is how to detect and manipulate a small number of phonons via its tiny mechanical motion. A solution would be to couple an optical cavity to a nanowire by introducing the ‘cavity optomechanics' framework, but the typical size difference between them becomes a barrier to achieving this. Here, we demonstrate near-field coupling of a silica microsphere cavity and an epitaxially grown InP/InAs free-standing nanowire. The evanescent optomechanical coupling enables not only fine probing of the nanowire’s mechanical motion by balanced homodyne interferometry but also tuning of the resonance frequency, linewidth, Duffing nonlinearity, and vibration axis in it. Combining this cavity optomechanics with epitaxial nanowire engineering opens the way to novel quantum metrology and information processing.

Transduction of Single Nanomechanical Pillar Resonators by Scattering of Surface Acoustic Waves

“…Micro- and nanomechanical pillar resonators are extremely versatile due to their vertical structure and capability to be arranged in dense arrays. Pillar resonators allow for the mass detection of nanoparticles, , the sensing of forces, − the strong confinement of photons and phonons, , and the manipulation of quantum dots − and surface acoustic waves (SAWs), − which are both exploited for quantum information processing. , However, many of the common electrical transduction methods used for horizontally oriented nanoelectromechanical systems (NEMS) are not convenient for vertical pillar resonators, such as piezoresisitive, , piezoelectric, , electrothermal, and magnetomotive transduction. , These methods rely on electrodes directly placed on top of the mechanical resonator, which cannot be done for pillars with standard lithographic fabrication techniques. That limits the feasible electrical transduction methods to capacitive transduction − and transduction by dielectric forces. , Both were successfully used for pillar resonators, , but electrodes have to be placed close to the mechanical resonator for both transduction methods.…”

“…M icro-and nanomechanical pillar resonators are extremely versatile due to their vertical structure and capability to be arranged in dense arrays. Pillar resonators allow for the mass detection of nanoparticles, 1,2 the sensing of forces, 3−5 the strong confinement of photons and phonons, 6,7 and the manipulation of quantum dots 8−10 and surface acoustic waves (SAWs), 11−16 which are both exploited for quantum information processing. 17,18 However, many of the common electrical transduction methods used for horizontally oriented nanoelectromechanical systems (NEMS) are not convenient for vertical pillar resonators, such as piezoresisitive, 19,20 piezoelectric, 21,22 electrothermal, 23 and magnetomotive transduction.…”

Surface acoustic wave transduction of single nanomechanical pillar resonators

“…Micro-and nanomechanical pillar resonators are extremely versatile due to their vertical structure and capability to be arranged in dense arrays. Pillar resonators allow for the manipulation of quantum dots [1][2][3] and surface acoustic waves (SAWs) [4][5][6][7][8][9] , the strong confinement of photons and phonons 10,11 , the detection of nanoparticles 12,13 , and the sensing of forces [14][15][16] . However, many of the common electrical transduction methods used for horizontally designed nanoelectromechancical systems (NEMS) are not convenient for vertical pillar resonators, such as piezoresisitive 17,18 , piezoelectric 19,20 , electrothermal 21 , and magnetomotive transduction 22,23 .…”