Abstract
A major achievement of the past decade has been the realization of macroscopic quantum systems by exploiting the interactions between optical cavities and mechanical resonators1,2,3. In these systems, phonons are coherently annihilated or created in exchange for photons. Similar phenomena have recently been observed through phonon-cavity coupling—energy exchange between the modes of a single system mediated by intrinsic material nonlinearity4,5. This has so far been demonstrated primarily for bulk crystalline, high-quality-factor (Q > 105) mechanical systems operated at cryogenic temperatures. Here, we propose graphene as an ideal candidate for the study of such nonlinear mechanics. The large elastic modulus of this material and capability for spatial symmetry breaking via electrostatic forces is expected to generate a wealth of nonlinear phenomena6, including tunable intermodal coupling. We have fabricated circular graphene membranes and report strong phonon-cavity effects at room temperature, despite the modest Q factor (∼100) of this system. We observe both amplification into parametric instability (mechanical lasing) and the cooling of Brownian motion in the fundamental mode through excitation of cavity sidebands. Furthermore, we characterize the quenching of these parametric effects at large vibrational amplitudes, offering a window on the all-mechanical analogue of cavity optomechanics, where the observation of such effects has proven elusive.
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Acknowledgements
The authors are grateful to P. Rose for assistance in growing the CVD graphene and to D. MacNeill for insightful discussions and comments. This work was supported by the Cornell Center for Materials Research with funding from the NSF MRSEC program (grant no. DMR-1120296) and by Nanoelectronics Research Initiative (NRI) through the Institute for Nanoelectronics Discovery and Exploration (INDEX). Support was also provided by the Academy of Finland (through the project ‘Quantum properties of optomechanical systems’). Fabrication was performed in part at the Cornell NanoScale Facility, a member of the National Nanotechnology Coordinated Infrastructure, which is supported by the NSF (grant no. ECCS-15420819).
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J.M.P., H.G.C., P.L.M. and R.D.A. designed the experiment; F.M. developed the supporting theory. R.D.A. and T.S.A. fabricated the samples; I.R.S. contributed to the design of the samples and the experimental set-up. R.D.A. and A.H. carried out the measurements. F.M. and R.D.A. analysed the data. All authors discussed the results and commented on the manuscript.
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De Alba, R., Massel, F., Storch, I. et al. Tunable phonon-cavity coupling in graphene membranes. Nature Nanotech 11, 741–746 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1038/nnano.2016.86
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nnano.2016.86
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