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Squeezed light from a silicon micromechanical resonator

Nature volume 500, pages 185–189 (2013)Cite this article

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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.

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Figure 1: Optomechanical device.
Figure 2: Experimental set-up and device characterization.
Figure 3: Optomechanical squeezing of light.
Figure 4: Spectral and power dependence of noise.

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Acknowledgements

We would like to thank K. Hammerer and A. A. Clerk for discussions. This work was supported by the DARPA/MTO ORCHID programme through a grant from the AFOSR; the Institute for Quantum Information and Matter, an NSF Physics Frontiers Center with support of the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation; the Vienna Science and Technology Fund WWTF; the European Commission, through IP SIQS and iQUOEMS; and the European Research Council. A.H.S.-N. and J.C. gratefully acknowledge support from NSERC. S.G. acknowledges support from the European Commission through a Marie Curie Fellowship.

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Author notes

  1. Amir H. Safavi-Naeini, Simon Gröblacher and Jeff T. Hill: These authors contributed equally to this work.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Kavli Nanoscience Institute and Thomas J. Watson, Sr, Laboratory of Applied Physics, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, 91125, California, USA

    Amir H. Safavi-Naeini, Simon Gröblacher, Jeff T. Hill, Jasper Chan & Oskar Painter

  2. Institute for Quantum Information and Matter, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, 91125, California, USA

    Amir H. Safavi-Naeini, Simon Gröblacher, Jeff T. Hill & Oskar Painter

  3. Vienna Center for Quantum Science and Technology, Faculty of Physics, University of Vienna, A-1090 Wien, Austria,

    Markus Aspelmeyer

  4. Max Planck Institute for the Science of Light, Günther-Scharowsky-Straße 1/Bldg 24, D-91058 Erlangen, Germany,

    Oskar Painter

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  1. Amir H. Safavi-Naeini
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Contributions

A.H.S.-N., S.G. and M.A. designed the experiment. A.H.S.-N., S.G., J.C. and J.T.H. designed and fabricated the device, and performed the measurements. A.H.S.-N., S.G., J.T.H. and O.P. performed the analysis and modelling of the data. All authors were involved in writing and editing the paper.

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Correspondence to Oskar Painter.

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The authors declare no competing financial interests.

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Supplementary Information

This file contains Supplementary Text and Data 1-6, Supplementary Figures 1-15, Supplementary Table 1 and additional references. (PDF 2030 kb)

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Safavi-Naeini, A., Gröblacher, S., Hill, J. et al. Squeezed light from a silicon micromechanical resonator. Nature 500, 185–189 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1038/nature12307

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