Mechanical oscillations in the quantum regime

Friday 23 Oct 2009, 14:15 → 15:15 Europe/Zurich

Geneva University, Auditoire Stueckelberg, 24 E. Ansermet

Yaroslav Blanter (Kvali Institute of Nanoscience, Delft University), Yaroslav Blanter (Kvali Institute of Nanoscience, Delft University)

Nanoelectromechanical systems (NEMS) couple electric properties and mechanical motion. Apart from being prospective applications, they also display many unusual physical phenomena and open new possibilities in condensed matter physics. One of the mainstream directions in NEMS research is the quest to observe zero-point mechanical motion, which has not been yet achieved experimentally. I will discuss the difficulties to be overcome on the way to the quantum regime, concentrating on our proposal of Josephson detection of quantized mechanical oscillations.