Optically driven ultra-stable nanomechanical rotor

Author(s)

Stefan Kuhn, Benjamin A. Stickler, Alon Kosloff, Fernando Patolsky, Klaus Hornberger, Markus Arndt, James Millen

Abstract

Nanomechanical devices have attracted the interest of a growing interdisciplinary research community, since they can be used as highly sensitive transducers for various physical quantities. Exquisite control over these systems facilitates experiments on the foundations of physics. Here, we demonstrate that an optically trapped silicon nanorod, set into rotation at MHz frequencies, can be locked to an external clock, transducing the properties of the time standard to the rod's motion with a remarkable frequency stability f

_r/Δf

_r of 7.7 × 10

¹¹. While the dynamics of this periodically driven rotor generally can be chaotic, we derive and verify that stable limit cycles exist over a surprisingly wide parameter range. This robustness should enable, in principle, measurements of external torques with sensitivities better than 0.25 zNm, even at room temperature. We show that in a dilute gas, real-time phase measurements on the locked nanorod transduce pressure values with a sensitivity of 0.3%.

Organisation(s)

Quantum Optics, Quantum Nanophysics and Quantum Information

External organisation(s)

Universitätsklinik Duisburg-Essen, Tel Aviv University, Vienna Center for Quantum Science and Technology (VCQ)

Journal

Nature Communications

Volume

8

No. of pages

5

ISSN

2041-1723

DOI

https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-017-01902-9

Publication date

11-2017

Peer reviewed

Yes

Austrian Fields of Science 2012

103025 Quantum mechanics, 103015 Condensed matter, 103021 Optics

Keywords

ASJC Scopus subject areas

General, Physics and Astronomy(all), Chemistry(all), Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology(all)

Portal url

https://ucrisportal.univie.ac.at/en/publications/optically-driven-ultrastable-nanomechanical-rotor(7e18bf2e-5587-4cac-b168-50a5933a5092).html