Speaker
Jack Sankey
(McGill University)
Description
In the field of optomechanics we have learned to use the forces exerted by laser light to gain a new level of control over a wide variety of mechanical systems. These systems range in size from kilogram-scale mirrors in gravitational wave detectors to nanomechanical elements in cryogenic environments.
In this talk I will discuss how a very modest source of laser light (i.e. a few microwatts) can profoundly affect the motion of a micromechanical "trampoline" resonator. We are able to laser cool its mechanical motion to a very low temperature, and we can generate a nonlinear optomechanical coupling that could be used for quantum nondemolition (QND) readout of the trampoline's phonon number state or as a strong optical trap. Our group is currently most excited about using such optomechanical effects to replace traditional elastic materials in mechanical force sensing elements. Since the behavior of light in a cavity is fundamentally different from that of atoms in a flexible material, such devices should circumvent the limitations of the best existing materials and achieve an unprecedented level of precision. In the ultimate limit, we hope to use light-assisted mechanical devices to sense quantum superpositions from a variety of qubit technologies and faithfully imprint this information upon photons traveling down a standard telecom fiber.
Primary author
Jack Sankey
(McGill University)
Co-authors
Mrs
Abeer Barasheed
(McGill University)
Mr
Alexandre Bourassa
(McGill University)
Mr
Bogdan Piciu
(McGill University)
Mr
Chris McNally
(McGill University)
Mr
Christoph Reinhardt
(McGill University)
Ms
Erika Janitz
(McGill University)
Mr
Laurent Rene de Cotret
(McGill University)
Mr
Ruf Maximilian
(LMU Munich)
Mr
Simon Bernard
(McGill University)
Dr
Tina Müller
(McGill University)
