Skip to main content

Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles and JavaScript.

  • Article
  • Published:

Non-classical mechanical states guided in a phononic waveguide

Nature Physics volume 18, pages 789–793 (2022)Cite this article

Subjects

Abstract

The ability to create, manipulate and detect non-classical states of light has been key for many recent achievements in quantum physics and for developing quantum technologies. Achieving the same level of control over phonons, the quanta of vibrations, could have a similar impact, in particular on the fields of quantum sensing and quantum information processing. Here we present a crucial step towards this level of control and realize a single-mode waveguide for individual phonons in a suspended silicon microstructure. We use a cavity–waveguide architecture, where the cavity is used as a source and detector for the mechanical excitations while the waveguide has a free-standing end to reflect the phonons. This enables us to observe multiple round trips of phonons between the source and the reflector. The long mechanical lifetime of almost 100 μs demonstrates the possibility of nearly lossless transmission of single phonons over, in principle, tens of centimetres. Our experiment demonstrates full on-chip control over travelling single phonons strongly confined in the directions transverse to the propagation axis, potentially enabling a time-encoded multimode quantum memory at telecommunications wavelength and advanced quantum acoustics experiments.

This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution

Access options

Buy this article

  • Purchase on Springer Link
  • Instant access to full article PDF
Buy now

Prices may be subject to local taxes which are calculated during checkout

Fig. 1: Phononic waveguide design.
Fig. 2: Device characterization.
Fig. 3: Non-classical travelling phonons.
Fig. 4: Time-bin-encoded phonon states.

Similar content being viewed by others

Data availability

Source data for the plots are available on Zenodo via https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.6384236. Source data are provided with this paper.

References

  1. Aspelmeyer, M., Kippenberg, T. J. & Marquardt, F. Cavity optomechanics. Rev. Mod. Phys. 86, 1391 (2014).

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  2. O’Connell, A. D. et al. Quantum ground state and single-phonon control of a mechanical resonator. Nature 464, 697–703 (2010).

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  3. Palomaki, T., Teufel, J., Simmonds, R. & Lehnert, K. Entangling mechanical motion with microwave fields. Science 342, 710 (2013).

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  4. Riedinger, R. et al. Remote quantum entanglement between two micromechanical oscillators. Nature 556, 473–477 (2018).

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  5. Ockeloen-Korppi, C. F. et al. Stabilized entanglement of massive mechanical oscillators. Nature 556, 478–482 (2018).

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  6. Marinković, I. et al. An optomechanical Bell test. Phys. Rev. Lett. 121, 220404 (2018).

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  7. Wallucks, A., Marinković, I., Hensen, B., Stockill, R. & Gröblacher, S. A quantum memory at telecom wavelengths. Nat. Phys. 16, 772–777 (2020).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  8. Andrews, R. W. et al. Bidirectional and efficient conversion between microwave and optical light. Nat. Phys. 10, 321–326 (2014).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  9. Vainsencher, A., Satzinger, K. J., Peairs, G. A. & Cleland, A. N. Bi-directional conversion between microwave and optical frequencies in a piezoelectric optomechanical device. Appl. Phys. Lett. 109, 033107 (2016).

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  10. Forsch, M. et al. Microwave-to-optics conversion using a mechanical oscillator in its quantum groundstate. Nat. Phys. 16, 69–74 (2020).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  11. Mirhosseini, M., Sipahigil, A., Kalaee, M. & Painter, O. Superconducting qubit to optical photon transduction. Nature 588, 599–603 (2020).

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  12. Habraken, S. J. M., Stannigel, K., Lukin, M. D., Zoller, P. & Rabl, P. Continuous mode cooling and phonon routers for phononic quantum networks. N. J. Phys. 14, 115004 (2012).

    Article  MathSciNet  Google Scholar 

  13. Delsing, P. et al. The 2019 surface acoustic waves roadmap. J. Phys. D 52, 353001 (2019).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  14. Schuetz, M. J. A. et al. Universal quantum transducers based on surface acoustic waves. Phys. Rev. X 5, 031031 (2015).

    Google Scholar 

  15. Bienfait, A. et al. Phonon-mediated quantum state transfer and remote qubit entanglement. Science 364, 368 (2019).

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  16. Golter, D. A. et al. Coupling a surface acoustic wave to an electron spin in diamond via a dark state. Phys. Rev. X 6, 041060 (2016).

    Google Scholar 

  17. Hermelin, S. et al. Electrons surfing on a sound wave as a platform for quantum optics with flying electrons. Nature 477, 435–438 (2011).

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  18. McNeil, R. P. G. et al. On-demand single-electron transfer between distant quantum dots. Nature 477, 439–442 (2011).

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  19. Kuzyk, M. C. & Wang, H. Scaling phononic quantum networks of solid-state spins with closed mechanical subsystems. Phys. Rev. X 8, 041027 (2018).

    Google Scholar 

  20. Chu, Y. & Gröblacher, S. A perspective on hybrid quantum opto- and electromechanical systems. Appl. Phys. Lett. 117, 150503 (2020).

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  21. Gustafsson, M. V., Santos, P. V., Johansson, G. & Delsing, P. Local probing of propagating acoustic waves in a gigahertz echo chamber. Nat. Phys. 8, 338–343 (2012).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  22. Gustafsson, M. V. et al. Propagating phonons coupled to an artificial atom. Science 346, 207 (2014).

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  23. Patel, R. N. et al. Single-mode phononic wire. Phys. Rev. Lett. 121, 040501 (2018).

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  24. Fang, K., Matheny, M. H., Luan, X. & Painter, O. Optical transduction and routing of microwave phonons in cavity-optomechanical circuits. Nat. Photon. 10, 489–496 (2016).

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  25. Farrera, P., Heinze, G. & De Riedmatten, H. Entanglement between a photonic time-bin qubit and a collective atomic spin excitation. Phys. Rev. Lett. 120, 100501 (2018).

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  26. Chan, J., Safavi-Naeini, A. H., Hill, J. T., Meenehan, S. & Painter, O. Optimized optomechanical crystal cavity with acoustic radiation shield. Appl. Phys. Lett. 101, 081115 (2012).

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  27. Hong, S. et al. Hanbury Brown and Twiss interferometry of single phonons from an optomechanical resonator. Science 358, 203 (2017).

    Article  ADS  MathSciNet  Google Scholar 

  28. Qiu, L., Shomroni, I., Seidler, P. & Kippenberg, T. J. Laser cooling of a nanomechanical oscillator to its zero-point energy. Phys. Rev. Lett. 124, 173601 (2020).

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  29. Riedinger, R. et al. Non-classical correlations between single photons and phonons from a mechanical oscillator. Nature 530, 313–316 (2016).

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  30. Weis, S. et al. Optomechanically induced transparency. Science 330, 1520 (2010).

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  31. Meenehan, S. M. et al. Silicon optomechanical crystal resonator at millikelvin temperatures. Phys. Rev. A 90, 011803 (2014).

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  32. Pang, X.-L. et al. A hybrid quantum memory-enabled network at room temperature. Sci. Adv. 6, eaax1425 (2020).

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  33. Borselli, M., Johnson, T. J. & Painter, O. Measuring the role of surface chemistry in silicon microphotonics. Appl. Phys. Lett. 88, 131114 (2006).

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgements

We thank E. Verhagen and R. Burgwal for valuable discussions and M. Forsch for experimental support. We further acknowledge assistance from the Kavli Nanolab Delft. This work is financially supported by the European Research Council (ERC CoG Q-ECHOS, 101001005), and by the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO/OCW), as part of the Frontiers of Nanoscience programme, as well as through Vidi (680-47-541/994) and Vrij Programma (680-92-18-04) grants. R.S. also acknowledges funding from the European Union under a Marie Skłodowska-Curie COFUND fellowship.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Kavli Institute of Nanoscience, Department of Quantum Nanoscience, Delft University of Technology, Delft, the Netherlands

    Amirparsa Zivari, Robert Stockill, Niccolò Fiaschi & Simon Gröblacher

Authors
  1. Amirparsa Zivari
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Robert Stockill
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  3. Niccolò Fiaschi
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  4. Simon Gröblacher
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Contributions

A.Z., R.S. and S.G. devised and planned the experiment. A.Z. simulated, designed and fabricated the sample. A.Z., R.S. and N.F. built the setup and performed the measurements. All authors analysed the data and wrote the manuscript. S.G. supervised the project.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Simon Gröblacher.

Ethics declarations

Competing interests

The authors declare no competing interests.

Peer review

Peer review information

Nature Physics thanks Krishna Balram and the other, anonymous, reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

Additional information

Publisher’s note Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Supplementary information

Supplementary Information

Supplementary Figs. 1–10 and discussion.

Source data

Source Data 1

Plotted data

Source Data 2

Plotted data

Source Data 3

Plotted data

Source Data 4

Plotted data

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Zivari, A., Stockill, R., Fiaschi, N. et al. Non-classical mechanical states guided in a phononic waveguide. Nat. Phys. 18, 789–793 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41567-022-01612-0

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41567-022-01612-0

This article is cited by

Search

Advanced search

Quick links

Nature Briefing

Sign up for the Nature Briefing newsletter — what matters in science, free to your inbox daily.

Get the most important science stories of the day, free in your inbox. Sign up for Nature Briefing