Related papers: Measuring nanomechanical motion with an imprecisio…
Optomechanical sensors are capable of transducing external perturbations to resolvable optical signals. A particular regime of interest is that of high-bandwidth force detection, where an impulse is delivered to the system over a short…
Precision measurements of space and time, like those made by the detectors of the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory (LIGO), are often confronted with fundamental limitations imposed by quantum mechanics. The Heisenberg…
The low-noise amplification of weak microwave signals is crucial for countless protocols in quantum information processing. Quantum mechanics sets an ultimate lower limit of half a photon to the added input noise for phase-preserving…
We measure the fundamental noise processes associated with a continuous linear position measurement of a micromechanical membrane incorporated in a microwave cavity optomechanical circuit. We observe the trade-off between the two…
We measure the response and thermal motion of a high-Q nanomechanical oscillator coupled to a superconducting microwave cavity in the resolved-sideband regime where the oscillator's resonance frequency exceeds the cavity's linewidth. The…
Standard Quantum Limit (SQL) of a classical mechanical force detection results from quantum back action impinged by the meter on a probe mechanical transducer perturbed by the force of interest. In this paper we introduce a technique of…
The sensitivity of a mechanical transducer is ultimately limited by its inherent quantum fluctuations. Here, we use an optically levitated nanoparticle to measure impulsive forces smaller than the particle's zero-point momentum uncertainty.…
Shot noise encodes additional information not directly inferable from simple electronic transport measurements. Previous measurements in atomic-scale metal junctions at cryogenic temperatures have shown suppression of the shot noise at…
Controlling a quantum system based on the observation of its dynamics is inevitably complicated by the backaction of the measurement process. Efficient measurements, however, maximize the amount of information gained per disturbance…
Interferometers are crucial for precision measurements, including gravitational waves, laser ranging, radar, and imaging. The phase sensitivity, the core parameter, can be quantum-enhanced to break the standard quantum limit (SQL) using…
Here we report on the realization of a Michelson-Sagnac interferometer whose purpose is the precise characterization of the motion of membranes showing significant light transmission. Our interferometer has a readout noise spectral density…
We implement a cavity opto-electromechanical system integrating electrical actuation capabilities of nanoelectromechanical devices with ultrasensitive mechanical transduction achieved via intra-cavity optomechanical coupling. Electrical…
The preparation of a mechanical oscillator driven by quantum back-action is a fundamental requirement to reach the standard quantum limit (SQL) for force measurement, in optomechanical systems. However, thermal fluctuating force generally…
The optical lever is a centuries old and widely-used detection technique employed in applications ranging from consumer products, industrial sensors to precision force microscopes used in scientific research. However, despite the long…
In the quest to develop viable designs for third-generation optical interferometric gravitational-wave detectors (e.g., LIGO-III and EURO), one strategy is to monitor the relative momentum or speed of the test-mass mirrors, rather than…
Optical measurement of the motion of a 940 kHz mechanical resonance of a silicon nitride nanostring resonator is demonstrated with a read out noise imprecision reaching 37 dB below that of the resonator's zero-point fluctuations. Via…
Inherent randomness and the resulting stochastic behavior of fundamental particles manifested as quantum noise put a lower bound on measurement imprecision in the quantum measurement process. In addition, the quantum noise imparts…
The uncertainty principle, applied naively to the test masses of a laser-interferometer gravitational-wave detector, produces a Standard Quantum Limit (SQL) on the interferometer's sensitivity. It has long been thought that beating this SQL…
We present optical sideband spectroscopy measurements of a mesoscopic mechanical oscillator cooled near its quantum ground state. The mechanical oscillator, corresponding to a 3.99GHz acoustic mode of a patterned silicon nanobeam, is…
Today's mechanical sensors are capable of detecting extremely weak perturbations while operating near the standard quantum limit. However, further improvements can be made in both sensitivity and bandwidth when we reduce the noise…