No Arabic abstract
In quantum optomechanics, finding materials and strategies to limit losses has been crucial to the progress of the field. Recently, superfluid 4He was proposed as a promising mechanical element for quantum optomechanics. This quantum fluid shows highly desirable properties (e.g. extremely low acoustic loss) for a quantum optomechanical system. In current implementations, superfluid optomechanical systems suffer from external sources of loss, which spoils the quality factor of resonators. In this work, we propose a new implementation, exploiting nanofluidic confinement. Our approach, based on acoustic resonators formed within phononic nanostructures, aims at limiting radiation losses to preserve the intrinsic properties of superfluid 4He. In this work, we estimate the optomechanical system parameters. Using recent theory, we derive the expected quality factors for acoustic resonators in different thermodynamic conditions. We calculate the sources of loss induced by the phononic nanostructures with numerical simulations. Our results indicate the feasibility of the proposed approach in a broad range of parameters, which opens new prospects for more complex geometries.
This work summarizes recent progress on the thermal transport properties of three-dimensional (3D) nanostructures, with an emphasis on experimental results. Depending on the applications, different 3D nanostructures can be prepared or designed to either achieve a low thermal conductivity for thermal insulation or thermoelectric devices, or a high thermal conductivity for thermal interface materials used in the continuing miniaturization of electronics. A broad range of 3D nanostructures have been discussed, ranging from colloidal crystals/assemblies, array structures, holey structures, hierarchical structures, 3D nanostructured fillers for metal matrix composites and polymer composites. Different factors that impact the thermal conductivity of these 3D structures are compared and analyzed. This work provides an overall understanding of the thermal transport properties of various 3D nanostructures, which will shed light on the thermal management at nanoscale.
We report the design and fabrication of diamond spin-mechanical resonators embedded in a two-dimensional (2D) phononic crystal square lattice. The rectangular resonator features GHz in-plane compression modes protected by the phononic band gap of the square lattice. A membrane-in-bulk approach is developed for the fabrication of the suspended 2D structure. This approach overcomes the limitations of the existing approaches, which are either incompatible with the necessary high-temperature thermal annealing or unsuitable for 2D structures with the required feature size. Graded soft oxygen etching, with the etching rate decreased gradually to below 1 nm/minute, is used to remove defective surface layers damaged by reactive ion etching. Combining the graded etching with other established surface treatment techniques reduces the optical linewidth of nitrogen vacancy centers in resonators with a thickness below 1 micron to as narrow as 330 MHz.
The Casimir force was predicted in 1948 as a force arising between macroscopic bodies from the zero-point energy. At finite temperatures it has been shown that a thermal Casimir force exists due to thermal rather than zero-point energy and there are a growing number of experiments that characterise the effect at a range of temperatures and distances. Additionally, in the rapidly evolving field of cavity optomechanics there is an endeavor to manipulate phonons and enhance coherence. We demonstrate a new way to achieve this through the first observation of Casimir spring and dilution in macroscopic optomechanics, by coupling a metallic SiN membrane to a photonic re-entrant cavity. The attraction of the spatially-localised Casimir spring mimics a non-contacting boundary condition giving rise to increased strain and acoustic coherence through dissipation dilution. This work invents a new way to manipulate phonons via thermal photons leading to ``in situ reconfigurable mechanical states, to reduce loss mechanisms and to create new types of acoustic non-linearity -- all at room temperature.
Polaritons enable the resonant coupling of excitons and photons to vibrations in the application-relevant super high frequency (SHF, 3-30 GHz) domain. We introduce a novel platform for coherent optomechanics based on the coupling of exciton-polaritons and electrically driven SHF longitudinal acoustic phonons confined within the spacer region of a planar Bragg microcavity. An intrinsic property of the microcavity platform is the back-feeding of phonons via reflections at the sample boundaries, which enables frequency x quality factors products exceeding 10^14 Hz as well as huge modulation amplitudes of the optical transition energies (up to 8 meV). We show that the modulation is dominated by the phonon-induced energy shifts of the excitonic polariton component, thus leading to an oscillatory transition between the regimes of weak and strong light-matter coupling. These results open the way for polariton-based coherent optomechanics in the non-adiabatic, side-band-resolved regime of coherent control.
The rising need for hybrid physical platforms has triggered a renewed interest for the development of agile radio-frequency phononic circuits with complex functionalities. The combination of travelling waves with resonant mechanical elements appears as an appealing means of harnessing elastic vibration. In this work, we demonstrate that this combination can be further enriched by the occurrence of elastic non-linearities induced travelling surface acoustic waves (SAW) interacting with a pair of otherwise linear micron-scale mechanical resonators. Reducing the resonator gap distance and increasing the SAW amplitude results in a frequency softening of the resonator pair response that lies outside the usual picture of geometrical Duffing non-linearities. The dynamics of the SAW excitation scheme allows further control of the resonator motion, notably leading to circular polarization states. These results paves the way towards versatile high-frequency phononic-MEMS/NEMS circuits fitting both classical and quantum technologies.