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Real-space tailoring of the electron–phonon coupling in ultraclean nanotube mechanical resonators

Nature Physics volume 10, pages 151–156 (2014)Cite this article

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Abstract

The coupling between electrons and phonons is at the heart of many fundamental phenomena in nature. Despite tremendous advances in controlling electrons or phonons in engineered nanosystems, control over their coupling is still widely lacking. Here we demonstrate the ability to fully tailor electron–phonon interactions using a new class of suspended carbon nanotube devices, in which we can form highly tunable single and double quantum dots at arbitrary locations along a nanotube mechanical resonator. We find that electron–phonon coupling can be turned on and off by controlling the position of a quantum dot along the resonator. Using double quantum dots we structure the interactions in real space to couple specific electronic and phononic modes. This tailored coupling allows measurement of the phonons’ spatial parity and imaging of their mode shapes. Finally, we demonstrate coupling between phonons and internal electrons in an isolated system, decoupled from the random environment of the electronic leads, a crucial step towards fully engineered quantum-coherent electron–phonon systems.

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Figure 1: A carbon nanotube mechanical resonator coupled to localized ultraclean quantum dots.
Figure 2: Dependence of dynamical electron–phonon coupling on the electron tunnelling rate.
Figure 3: Spatial dependence of the electron–phonon coupling, and direct imaging of the phonon modes.
Figure 4: Tailored selective coupling between phononic and electronic modes in a double quantum dot.
Figure 5: Coupling of mechanical motion to internal electronic degree of freedom in a double quantum dot, isolated from the leads.

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Acknowledgements

We acknowledge O. Auslaender, E. Berg, F. Kuemmeth, P. L. McEuen, A. Shnirman and A. Yacoby for useful discussions and comments on the manuscript, and D. Mahalu for the electron-beam writing. S.I. acknowledges the financial support by the Legacy Heritage Foundation (ISF, No. 1267/12), the Bi-National Science Foundation (BSF, No. 710647-03), the Minerva foundation (No. 780054), the ERC starters grant (QUANT-DES-CNT, No. 258753), the Marie Curie People grant (IRG, No. 239322), and the Alon fellowship. S.I. is incumbent of the Z. William and E. B. Novick career development chair. F.v.O. acknowledges support through Schwerpunktprogramm SPP 1459, SFB 658 and a Helmholtz Virtual Institute.

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Author notes

  1. A. Benyamini and A. Hamo: These authors contributed equally to this work

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Condensed Matter Physics, Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot 76100, Israel

    A. Benyamini, A. Hamo & S. Ilani

  2. Dahlem Center for Complex Quantum Systems and Fachbereich Physik, Freie Universität Berlin, 14195 Berlin, Germany

    S. Viola Kusminskiy & F. von Oppen

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  1. A. Benyamini
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  2. A. Hamo
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  3. S. Viola Kusminskiy
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  5. S. Ilani
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Contributions

A.B., A.H. and S.I. performed the experiments, analysed the data and contributed to its theoretical interpretation. S.V.K. and F.v.O. developed the theoretical model.

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Correspondence to S. Ilani.

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Benyamini, A., Hamo, A., Kusminskiy, S. et al. Real-space tailoring of the electron–phonon coupling in ultraclean nanotube mechanical resonators. Nature Phys 10, 151–156 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1038/nphys2842

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