Squeezed light from a silicon micromechanical resonator
- Author(s)
- Amir H. Safavi-Naeini, Simon Gröblacher, Jeff T. Hill, Jasper Chan, Markus Aspelmeyer, Oskar Painter
- Abstract
Monitoring a mechanical object’s motion, even with the gentle touch of
light, fundamentally alters its dynamics. The experimental manifestation
of this basic principle of quantum mechanics, its link to the quantum
nature of light and the extension of quantum measurement to the
macroscopic realm have all received extensive attention over the past
half-century1, 2. The use of squeezed light, with quantum fluctuations below that of the vacuum field, was proposed nearly three decades ago3
as a means of reducing the optical read-out noise in precision force
measurements. Conversely, it has also been proposed that a continuous
measurement of a mirror’s position with light may itself give rise to
squeezed light4, 5. Such squeezed-light generation has recently been demonstrated in a system of ultracold gas-phase atoms6
whose centre-of-mass motion is analogous to the motion of a mirror.
Here we describe the continuous position measurement of a solid-state,
optomechanical system fabricated from a silicon microchip and comprising
a micromechanical resonator coupled to a nanophotonic cavity. Laser
light sent into the cavity is used to measure the fluctuations in the
position of the mechanical resonator at a measurement rate comparable to
its resonance frequency and greater than its thermal decoherence rate.
Despite the mechanical resonator’s highly excited thermal state (104 phonons), we observe, through homodyne detection, squeezing of the reflected light’s fluctuation spectrum at a level 4.5 ± 0.2 per cent below that of vacuum noise over a bandwidth of a few megahertz around the mechanical resonance frequency of 28 megahertz.
With further device improvements, on-chip squeezing at significant
levels should be possible, making such integrated microscale devices
well suited for precision metrology applications.
- Organisation(s)
- Quantum Optics, Quantum Nanophysics and Quantum Information
- External organisation(s)
- California Institute of Technology (Caltech), Max-Planck-Institut für die Physik des Lichts
- Journal
- Nature
- Volume
- 500
- Pages
- 185-189
- No. of pages
- 5
- ISSN
- 0028-0836
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.1038/nature12307
- Publication date
- 08-2013
- Peer reviewed
- Yes
- Austrian Fields of Science 2012
- 103021 Optics, 103008 Experimental physics, 103025 Quantum mechanics
- Keywords
- Portal url
- https://ucrisportal.univie.ac.at/en/publications/squeezed-light-from-a-silicon-micromechanical-resonator(e131b005-5865-4411-b531-0d7920eaaa2c).html