Work

Room Temperature, Cavity-Free Capacitive Strong Coupling to Mechanical Motion

Year: 2025

Type: article

Abstract: The back-action damping of mechanical motion by electromagnetic radiation is typically overwhelmed by internal loss channels unless demanding experimental ingredients such as superconducting resonators, high-quality optical cavities, or large magnetic fields are employed. Here we demonstrate the first room temperature, cavity-free, all-electric device where back-action damping exceeds internal loss, enabled by a mechanically compliant parallel-plate capacitor with a nanoscale plate separation and an aspect ratio exceeding 1,000. The device has 4 orders of magnitude lower insertion loss than a comparable commercial quartz crystal and achieves a position imprecision rivaling optical interferometers. With the help of a back-action isolation scheme, we observe radiative cooling of mechanical motion by a remote cryogenic load. This work provides a technologically accessible route to high-precision sensing, transduction, and signal processing.

Source: Nano Letters

DOI: 10.1021/acs.nanolett.4c05796

Authors: Denise Puglia, Rachel Odessey, Peter S. Burns, Niklas Luhmann, Silvan Schmid, Andrew P. Higginbotham

Institutions: Institute of Science and Technology Austria, University of Chicago, TU Wien

Language: English

Topic: Mechanical and Optical Resonators

Subfield: Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics

Field: Physics and Astronomy

Domain: Physical Sciences

Open Access status: green

Funders: Institute of Science and Technology Austria, Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, Austrian Science Fund

Awards: G2845221282, G4468192843