We discuss the design of quantum hybrid inertial sensor that combines an optomechanical inertial sensor with the retro-reflector of a cold atom interferometer. This sensor fusion approach provides absolute and high accuracy measurements with cold atom interferometers, while utilizing the optomechanical inertial sensor at frequencies above the repetition rate of the atom interferometer. This improves the overall measurement bandwidth as well as the robustness and field deployment capabilities of these systems. We evaluate which parameters yield an optimal acceleration sensitivity, from which we anticipate a noise floor at nano-g levels from DC to 1 kHz.
An inertial sensor design is proposed in this paper to achieve high sensitivity and large dynamic range in the sub-Hz frequency regime. High acceleration sensitivity is obtained by combining optical cavity readout systems with monolithically fabricated mechanical resonators. A high-sensitivity heterodyne interferometer simultaneously monitors the test mass with an extensive dynamic range for low-stiffness resonators. The bandwidth is tuned by optical feedback cooling to the test mass via radiation pressure interaction using an intensity-modulated laser. The transfer gain of the feedback system…
We propose an optomechanical nano-gravimeter based on exceptional points. The system is a coupled cavity optomechanical system, in which the gain and loss are applied by driving the cavities with a blue detuned and red detuned electromagnetic field, respectively. When the gain and loss reach a balance, the system will show the degeneracy of exceptional points, and any perturbation will cause an eigenfrequencies split, which is proportional to the square root of the perturbation strength. Compared with the traditional optomechanical sensors, the sensitivity is greatly enhanced. This work paves …
Microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) have been applied to many measurement problems in physics, chemistry, biology and medicine. In parallel, cavity optomechanical systems have achieved quantum-limited displacement sensitivity and ground state cooling of nanoscale objects. By integrating a novel cavity optomechanical structure into an actuated MEMS sensing platform, we demonstrate a system with high quality-factor interferometric readout, electrical tuning of the optomechanical coupling by two orders of magnitude, and a mechanical transfer function adjustable via feedback. The platform separa…
Nanoscale photonic crystal cavity optomechanical devices enable detection of nanomechanical phenomena with a sensitivity sufficient to observe quantum effects. Here we present the design of a one-dimensional air-mode photonic crystal cavity patterned in a silicon nitride nanobeam, and show that it forms the basis for cavity optomechanical split-beam and paddle nanocavity devices useful for force detection and nonlinear quantum sensing. The air-mode of this device is advantageous for optomechanical coupling, while also having ultrahigh optical quality factor $Q_o\sim 10^6$ despite its proximity…
We experimentally study an optomechanical cavity that is formed between a mechanical resonator, which serves as a movable mirror, and a stationary on-fiber dielectric mirror. A significant change in the behavior of the system is observed when the distance between the fiber's tip and the mechanical resonator is made smaller than about 1 micrometer. The observed effects are attributed to the combined influence of Casimir force, Coulomb interaction due to trapped charges, and optomechanical coupling. The comparison between experimental results and theory yields a partial agreement.
We consider an optomechanical system that is composed of a mechanical and an optical mode interacting through a linear and quadratic optomechanical dispersive couplings. The system is operated in an unresolved side band limit with a high quality factor mechanical resonator. Such a system then acts as parametrically driven oscillator, giving access to an intensity assisted tunability of the spring constant. This enables the operation of optomechanical system in its 'soft mode' wherein the mechanical spring softens and responds with a lower resonance frequency. We show that this soft mode can be…
Probing the boundary between classical and quantum mechanics has been one of the central themes in modern physics. Recently, experiments to precisely measure the force acting on milligram scale oscillators with optical cavities are attracting interest as promising tools to test quantum mechanics, decoherence mechanisms, and gravitational physics. In this paper, we review the present status of experiments using milligram scale optomechanical systems. We compare the feasibility of reaching the quantum regime with a pendulum, torsion pendulum, and optically levitated mirror. Considerations for de…
Optomechanically controlled response amplification for enhanced quantum sensing
Joint Laboratory of Optics of Palacký University and Institute of Physics ASCR, Faculty of Science, Palacký University（帕拉茨基大学与捷克科学院物理研究所联合光学实验室，帕拉茨基大学理学院）
Quantum experiments with nanomechanical oscillators are regarded as a testbed for hypothetical modifications of the Schrödinger equation, which predict a breakdown of the superposition principle and induce classical behavior at the macro-scale. It is generally believed that the sensitivity to these unconventional effects grows with the mass of the mechanical quantum system. Here we show that the opposite is the case for optomechanical systems in the presence of generic noise sources, such as thermal and measurement noise. We determine conditions for distinguishing these decoherence processes f…
We use an all-optical pump-probe method to develop a mass sensing mechanism in a molecular plasmonic system at room temperature. The system consists of a double-clamped graphene nanoribbon that parametrically interacts with two types of isotropic and anisotropic spherical plasmonic cavities in the presence of a strong pump field and a weak probe pulse. Based on the mode-selective quantization scheme and analogy with the canonical model of the cavity optomechanics, we formulate the Hamiltonian of the system in terms of the electromagnetic Greens tensor. In this manner, we derive an explicit for…
Quantum control techniques applied at macroscopic scales provide us with opportunities in fundamental physics and practical applications. Among them, measurement-based feedback allows efficient control of optomechanical systems and quantum-enhanced sensing. In this paper, we propose a near-resonant narrow-band force sensor with extremely low optically added noise in an optomechanical system subject to a feedback-controlled in-loop light. The membrane's intrinsic motion consisting of zero-point motion and thermal motion is affected by the added noise of measurement due to the backaction noise a…
Noise-Limited Sensitivity in Cavity Optomechanical Molecular Sensing Enabled by Quantum Zero-Point Displacement Coupling and Strong Photon-Phonon Interaction for Chiral Detection
Institute of Science and Technology Austria (ISTA)（奥地利科学技术研究所）；Institute for Theoretical Physics, Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen（蒂宾根大学理论物理研究所）；Naturwissenschaftlich-Technische Fakultät, Universität Siegen（锡根大学自然科学技术学院）；Department of Physics and Astronomy, University College London（伦敦大学学院物理与天文系）；ZARM, University of Bremen（不来梅大学ZARM中心）
Precise measurements of the displacement of, and force acting on, a mechanical oscillator can be performed by coupling the oscillator to an optical cavity. Brownian thermal forces represent a fundamental limit to measurement sensitivity which impedes the ability to use precise force measurements as a tool of fundamental enquiry, particularly in the context of macroscopic quantum measurements and table-top gravitational experiments. A torsion pendulum with a low mechanical resonant frequency can be limited by very small thermal forces - from its suspensions - at frequencies above resonance. Her…
Optomechanics allows the transduction of weak forces to optical fields, with many efforts approaching the standard quantum limit. We consider force-sensing using a mirror-in-the-middle setup and use two coupled cavity modes originated from normal mode splitting for separating pump and probe fields. We find that this two-mode model can be reduced to an effective single-mode model, if we drive the pump mode strongly and detect the signal from the weak probe mode. The optimal force detection sensitivity at zero frequency (DC) is calculated and we show that one can beat the standard quantum limit …
We propose and analyse a feasible experimental scheme for a quantum force sensor based on the elimination of back-action noise through coherent quantum noise cancellation (CQNC) in a hybrid atom-cavity optomechanical setup assisted with squeezed vacuum injection. The force detector, which allows for a continuous, broad-band detection of weak forces well below the standard quantum limit (SQL), is formed by a single optical cavity simultaneously coupled to a mechanical oscillator and to an ensemble of ultracold atoms. The latter acts as a negative-mass oscillator so that atomic noise cancels exa…
We theoretically investigate optical detection of a weak classical force acting on a free particle in a dissipative coupling optomechanical system with a degenerate parametric amplifier (PA). We show that the PA allows one to achieve the force sensitivity far better than the standard quantum limit (SQL) over a broad range of the detection frequencies. The improvement depends on the parametric gain and the driving power. Moreover, we discuss the effects of the mechanical damping and the thermal noise on the force sensitivity. We find that the robustness of the force sensitivity much better than…
Homodyne and heterodyne detection represent "twin-pillars" of quantum displacement sensing using optical cavities, having permitted major breakthroughs including detection of gravitational waves and of the motion of quantum ground-state cooled mechanical oscillators. Both can suffer disadvantages as diagnostics in quantum optomechanics, either through symmetrisation (homodyne), or loss of correlations (heterodyne). We show that, for modest heterodyne beat frequencies ($Ω\sim ω_M/10 \gg Γ$), judicious construction of the autocorrelation of the measured current can either recover (i) a spectrum …
We investigate a hybrid quantum system consisting of a cavity optomechanical device optically coupled to an ultracold quantum gas. We show that the dispersive properties of the ultracold gas can be used to dramatically modify the optomechanical response of the mechanical resonator. We examine hybrid schemes wherein the mechanical resonator is coupled either to the motional or the spin degrees of freedom of the ultracold gas. In either case, we find an enhancement of more than two orders of magnitude in optomechanical cooling due to this hybrid interaction. Significantly, based on demonstrated …
We investigate quantum-squeezing-enhanced weak-force sensing via a nonlinear optomechanical resonator containing a movable mechanical mirror and an optical parametric amplifier (OPA). Herein, we determined that tuning the OPA parameters can considerably suppress quantum noise and substantially enhance force sensitivity, enabling the device to extensively surpass the standard quantum limit. This indicates that under realistic experimental conditions, we can achieve ultrahigh-precision quantum force sensing by harnessing nonlinear optomechanical devices.
We present new techniques for inertial-sensing atom interferometers which produce multiple phase measurements per experimental cycle. With these techniques, we realize two types of multiport measurements, namely quadrature phase detection and real-time systematic phase cancellation, which address challenges in operating high-sensitivity cold-atom sensors in mobile and field applications. We confirm experimentally the increase in sensitivity due to quadrature phase detection in the presence of large phase uncertainty, and demonstrate suppression of systematic phases on a single shot basis.
We describe an ultra-compact ($\sim 10$ cm$^3$ physics package) inertial sensor based on atomic matter waves that are guided within an optical lattice during almost the entire interferometer cycle. We demonstrate large momentum transfer (LMT) of up to 8$\hbar k$ photon momentum with a combination of Bragg pulses and Bloch oscillations with scalability to larger numbers of photons. Between momentum transfer steps, we maintain the atoms in a co-moving optical lattice waveguide so that the atoms are in free space only during the Bragg pulses. Our guided matter wave approach paves the way for atom…
We simulate an optomechanical system via a cavity QED scenario with a movable atom and investigate its application in the tiny mass sensing. We find that the steady-state solution of the system exhibits a multiple stability behavior, which is similar to that in the optomechanical system. We explain this phenomenon by the opto-mechanical interaction term in the effective Hamiltonian. Due to the dressed states formed by the effective coupling between the vibration degree of the atom and the optical mode in the cavity, we observe a narrow transparent window in the output field. We utilize this vi…
We show that light-pulse atom interferometry with atomic point sources and spatially resolved detection enables multi-axis (two rotation, one acceleration) precision inertial sensing at long interrogation times. Using this method, we demonstrate a light-pulse atom interferometer for Rb-87 with 1.4 cm peak wavepacket separation and a duration of 2T = 2.3 seconds. The inferred acceleration sensitivity of each shot is 6.7 * 10^(-12) g, which improves on previous limits by more than two orders of magnitude. We also measure the Earth's rotation rate with a precision of 200 nrad/s.
Using a flowchart representation of quantum optomechanical dynamics, we design coherent quantum-noise-cancellation schemes that can eliminate the back-action noise induced by radiation pressure at all frequencies and thus overcome the standard quantum limit of force sensing. The proposed schemes can be regarded as novel examples of coherent feedforward quantum control.
Optomechanical systems show tremendous promise for high sensitivity sensing of forces and modification of mechanical properties via light. For example, similar to neutral atoms and trapped ions, laser cooling of mechanical motion by radiation pressure can take single mechanical modes to their ground state. Conventional optomechanical cooling is able to introduce additional damping channel to mechanical motion, while keeping its thermal noise at the same level, and as a consequence, the effective temperature of the mechanical mode is lowered. However, the ratio of temperature to quality factor …
Quantum entanglement is the key to many applications like quantum key distribution, quantum teleportation, and quantum sensing. However, reliably generating quantum entanglement in macroscopic systems has proved to be a challenge. Here, we present a detailed analysis of ponderomotive entanglement generation which utilizes optomechanical interactions to create quantum correlations. We numerically calculate an entanglement measure -- the logarithmic negativity -- for the quantitative assessment of the entanglement. Experimental limitations, including thermal noise and optical loss, from measurem…
Optomechanical sensors involving multiple optical carriers can experience mechanically mediated interactions causing multi-mode correlations across the optical fields. One instance is laser-interferometric gravitational wave detectors which introduce multiple carrier frequencies for classical sensing and control purposes. An outstanding question is whether such multi-carrier optomechanical sensors outperform their single-carrier counterpart in terms of quantum-limited sensitivity. We show that the best precision is achieved by a single-carrier instance of the sensor. For the current LIGO detec…
Optomechanical systems offer new opportunities in quantum information processing and quantum sensing. Many solid-state quantum devices operate at millikelvin temperatures -- however, it has proven challenging to operate nanoscale optomechanical devices at these ultralow temperatures due to their limited thermal conductance and parasitic optical absorption. Here, we demonstrate a two-dimensional optomechanical crystal resonator capable of achieving large cooperativity $C$ and small effective bath occupancy $n_b$, resulting in a quantum cooperativity $C_{\text{eff}}\equiv C/n_b \approx 1.3 > 1$ …
In this review, we study how a hybrid optomechanical system (OMS), in which a quantum micro- or nano-mechanical oscillator (MO) is coupled to the electromagnetic (EM) radiation pressure, consisting of an ensemble of ultracold atoms or an atomic Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC), can be used as an ultra precision quantum sensor for measuring very weak signals. As is well-known in any precise quantum measurement the competition between the shot noise (SN) and the backaction noise of measurement executes a limitation on the measurement precision which is the so-called standard quantum limit (SQL). I…
We model optomechanical systems as linear optical amplifiers. This provides a unified treatment of diverse optomechanical phenomena. We emphasize, in particular, the relationship between ponderomotive squeezing and optomechanically induced transparency, two foci of current research. We characterize the amplifier response to quantum and deliberately applied fluctuations, both optical and mechanical. Further, we apply these results to establish quantum limits on external force sensing both on and off cavity resonance. We find that the maximum sensitivity attained on resonance constitutes an abso…
We present the first demonstration of an inertially sensitive atomic interferometer based on a continuous, rather than pulsed, atomic beam at sub-Doppler temperatures in three dimensions. We demonstrate 30\% fringe contrast in continuous, inertially sensitive interference fringes at interrogation time $T=6.7~\mathrm{ms}$ and a short-term phase measurement noise of $530~\mathrm{μrad /\sqrt{Hz}}$ as inferred from interference measurements. Atoms are delivered to the interferometer by a cold-rubidium source that produces a high flux of atoms at temperature $\leq15~\mathrmμ K$ in three dimensions …
Optically trapped dielectric objects are well suited for reaching the quantum regime of their center of mass motion in an ultra-high vacuum environment. We show that ground state cooling of an optically trapped nanosphere is achievable when starting at room temperature, by sympathetic cooling of a cold atomic gas optically coupled to the nanoparticle. Unlike cavity cooling in the resolved sideband limit, this system requires only a modest cavity finesse and it allows the cooling to be turned off, permitting subsequent observation of strongly-coupled dynamics between the atoms and sphere. Nanos…
We study in detail a peculiar configuration of the Talbot-Lau matter wave interferometer, characterised by unequal distances between the two diffraction gratings and the observation plane. We refer to this apparatus as the "asymmetric Talbot-Lau setup". Particular attention is given to its capabilities as an inertial sensor for particle and atomic beams, also in comparison with the classical moiré deflectometer. The present analysis is motivated by possible experimental applications in the context of antimatter wave interferometry, including the measurement of the gravitational acceleration of…
Exploring quantum technology to precisely measure physical quantities is a meaningful task for practical scientific researches. Here, we propose a novel quantum sensing model based on dressed states driving (DSD) in stimulated Raman adiabatic passage. The model is universal for sensing different physical quantities, such as magnetic field, mass, rotation and etc. For different sensors, the used systems can range from macroscopic scale, e.g. optomechanical systems, to microscopic nanoscale, e.g. nitrogen-vacancy color centres in diamond. By investigating the dynamics of color detuning of DSD pa…
Quantum networks enable a broad range of practical and fundamental applications spanning distributed quantum computing to sensing and metrology. A cornerstone of such networks is an interface between telecom photons and quantum memories. Here we demonstrate a novel approach based on cavity optomechanics that utilizes the susceptibility of spin qubits to strain. We use it to control electron spins of nitrogen-vacancy centers in diamond with photons in the 1550 nm telecommunications wavelength band. This method does not involve qubit optical transitions and is insensitive to spectral diffusion. …
We determine the quantum mechanical limits to inertial mass-sensing based on nanomechanical systems. We first consider a harmonically oscillating cantilever whose vibration frequency is changed by mass accretion at its surface. We show that its zero-point fluctuations limit the mass sensitivity, for attainable parameters, to about an electron mass. In contrast to the case of a classical cantilever, we find the mass sensitivity of the quantum mechanical cantilever is independent of its resonant frequency in a certain parameter regime at low temperatures. We then consider an optomechanical setup…
Optomechanical detectors have reached the standard quantum limit in position and force sensing where measurement backaction noise starts to be the limiting factor for the sensitivity. A strategy to circumvent measurement backaction, and surpass the standard quantum limit, has been suggested by M. Tsang and C. Caves in Phys. Rev. Lett. 105 123601 (2010). We provide a detailed analysis of this method and assess its benefits, requirements, and limitations. We conclude that a proof-of-principle demonstration based on a micro-optomechanical system is demanding, but possible. However, for parameters…
Nano- and micromechanical solid-state quantum devices have become a focus of attention. Reliably generating nonclassical states of their motion is of interest both for addressing fundamental questions about macroscopic quantum phenomena and for developing quantum technologies in the domains of sensing and transduction. We used quantum optical control techniques to conditionally generate single-phonon Fock states of a nanomechanical resonator. We performed a Hanbury Brown and Twiss-type experiment that verified the nonclassical nature of the phonon state without requiring full state reconstruct…
Gauge fields play important roles in condensed matter, explaining for example nonreciprocal and topological transport phenomena. Establishing gauge potentials for phonon transport in nanomechanical systems would bring quantum Hall physics to a new domain, which offers broad applications in sensing and signal processing, and is naturally associated with strong nonlinearities and thermodynamics. In this work, we demonstrate a magnetic gauge field for nanomechanical vibrations in a scalable, on-chip optomechanical system. We exploit multimode optomechanical interactions, which provide a useful re…
