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Optical detection of radio waves through a nanomechanical transducer

Nature volume 507, pages 81–85 (2014)Cite this article

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Abstract

Low-loss transmission and sensitive recovery of weak radio-frequency and microwave signals is a ubiquitous challenge, crucial in radio astronomy, medical imaging, navigation, and classical and quantum communication. Efficient up-conversion of radio-frequency signals to an optical carrier would enable their transmission through optical fibres instead of through copper wires, drastically reducing losses, and would give access to the set of established quantum optical techniques that are routinely used in quantum-limited signal detection. Research in cavity optomechanics1,2 has shown that nanomechanical oscillators can couple strongly to either microwave3,4,5 or optical fields6,7. Here we demonstrate a room-temperature optoelectromechanical transducer with both these functionalities, following a recent proposal8 using a high-quality nanomembrane. A voltage bias of less than 10 V is sufficient to induce strong coupling4,6,7 between the voltage fluctuations in a radio-frequency resonance circuit and the membrane’s displacement, which is simultaneously coupled to light reflected off its surface. The radio-frequency signals are detected as an optical phase shift with quantum-limited sensitivity. The corresponding half-wave voltage is in the microvolt range, orders of magnitude less than that of standard optical modulators. The noise of the transducer—beyond the measured Johnson noise of the resonant circuit—consists of the quantum noise of light and thermal fluctuations of the membrane, dominating the noise floor in potential applications in radio astronomy and nuclear magnetic imaging. Each of these contributions is inferred to be when balanced by choosing an electromechanical cooperativity of with an optical power of 1 mW. The noise temperature of the membrane is divided by the cooperativity. For the highest observed cooperativity of , this leads to a projected noise temperature of 40 mK and a sensitivity limit of . Our approach to all-optical, ultralow-noise detection of classical electronic signals sets the stage for coherent up-conversion of low-frequency quantum signals to the optical domain8,9,10,11.

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Figure 1: Optoelectromechanical system.
Figure 2: Mechanically induced transparency.
Figure 3: Strong-coupling regime.
Figure 4: Voltage sensitivity and noise.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the DARPA project QUASAR, the European Union Seventh Framework Program through SIQS (grant no. 600645) and iQUOEMS (grant no. 323924), and the ERC grants QIOS (grant no. 306576) and INTERFACE (grant no. 291038). We would like to thank J. H. Müller for valuable discussions, A. Barg and A. Næsby for assistance with the interferometer, and L. Jørgensen for cleanroom support.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Niels Bohr Institute, University of Copenhagen, 2100 Copenhagen, Denmark,

    T. Bagci, A. Simonsen, E. Zeuthen, J. Appel, A. Sørensen, K. Usami, A. Schliesser & E. S. Polzik

  2. Department of Micro- and Nanotechnology, Technical University of Denmark, DTU Nanotech, 2800 Kongens Lyngby, Denmark,

    S. Schmid & L. G. Villanueva

  3. Joint Quantum Institute/NIST, College Park, 20742, Maryland, USA

    J. M. Taylor

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  1. T. Bagci
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Contributions

T.B., A. Simonsen, S.S., K.U. and A. Schliesser performed the experiments and analysed the data. L.G.V. and S.S. designed and fabricated the membrane and the capacitor. J.A. designed the electronic readout circuit. J.M.T., K.U., A. Sørensen, A. Schliesser, E.Z. and E.S.P. developed the model. T.B., A. Schliesser and E.S.P. wrote the paper. A. Schliesser coordinated most of the work. E.S.P. conceived and supervised the project. All authors discussed the results and contributed to the manuscript.

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Correspondence to A. Schliesser or E. S. Polzik.

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Bagci, T., Simonsen, A., Schmid, S. et al. Optical detection of radio waves through a nanomechanical transducer. Nature 507, 81–85 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1038/nature13029

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