Search

We report a study of a cavity optomechanical system driven by narrow-band electromagnetic fields, which are applied either in the form of uncorrelated noise, or as a more structured spectrum. The bandwidth of the driving spectra is smaller than the mechanical resonant frequency, and thus we can describe the resulting physics using concepts familiar from regular cavity optomechanics in the resolved-sideband limit. With a blue-detuned noise driving, the noise-induced interaction leads to anti-damping of the mechanical oscillator, and a self-oscillation threshold at an average noise power that is comparable to that of a coherent driving tone. This process can be seen as noise-induced dynamical amplification of mechanical motion. However, when the noise bandwidth is reduced down to the order of the mechanical damping, we discover a large shift of the power threshold of self-oscillation. This is due to the oscillator adiabatically following the instantaneous noise profile. In addition to blue-detuned noise driving, we investigate narrow-band driving consisting of two coherent drive tones nearby in frequency. Also in these cases, we observe deviations from a naive optomechanical description relying only on the tones' frequencies and powers.

Spinel oxides are recognized as promising Fenton-like catalysts for the degradation of antibiotics. However, the catalytic performance is restrained by the poor electron transfer rate (ETR). Herein, hollow NiCo2O4@C nanocages are rationally designed and prepared to accelerate ETR in peroxymonosulfate (PMS) activation for tetracycline (TC) degradation.

Feedback-based control of nano- and micromechanical resonators can enable the study of macroscopic quantum phenomena and also sensitive force measurements. Here, we demonstrate the feedback cooling of a low-loss and high-stress macroscopic SiN membrane resonator close to its quantum ground state. We use the microwave optomechanical platform, where the resonator is coupled to a microwave cavity. The experiment utilizes a Josephson travelling wave parametric amplifier, which is nearly quantum-limited in added noise, and is important to mitigate resonator heating due to system noise in the feedback loop. We reach a thermal phonon number as low as 1.6, which is limited primarily by microwave-induced heating. We also discuss the sideband asymmetry observed when a weak microwave tone for independent readout is applied in addition to other tones used for the cooling. The asymmetry can be qualitatively attributed to the quantum-mechanical imbalance between emission and absorption. However, we find that the observed asymmetry is only partially due to this quantum effect. In specific situations, the asymmetry is fully dominated by a cavity Kerr effect under multitone irradiation.

Cubic silicon-carbide crystals, known for their high thermal conductivity and in-plane stress, hold significant promise for the development of high-quality ($Q$) mechanical oscillators. Enabling coherent electrical manipulation of long-lived mechanical resonators would be instrumental in advancing the development of phononic memories, repeaters, and transducers for microwave quantum states. In this study, we demonstrate the compatibility of high-stress and crystalline (3C-phase) silicon-carbide membranes with superconducting microwave circuits. We establish a coherent electromechanical interface for long-lived phonons, allowing precise control over the electromechanical cooperativity. This interface enables tunable slow-light time with group delays extending up to an impressive duration of \emph{an hour}. We then investigate a phononic memory based on the high-$Q$ ($10^{8}$) silicon-carbide membrane, capable of storing and retrieving microwave coherent states \emph{on-demand}. The thermal and coherent components can be distinguished through state tomography in quadrature phase space, which shows an exponential increase and decay trend respectively as the storage time increases. The electromechanical interface and phononic memory made from crystalline silicon-carbide membrane possess enticing attributes, including low microwave-induced mechanical heating, phase coherence, an energy decay time of $T_{1}=19.9$~s, and it acquires less than one quantum noise within $\tau_{\textrm{coh}}=41.3$~ms storage period. These findings underscore the unique opportunities provided by cubic silicon-carbide membrane crystals for the storage and transfer of quantum information across distinct components of hybrid quantum systems.

In this work, we present a device consisting of two coupled transmon qubits, each of which are coupled to an independent high-overtone bulk acoustic wave resonator (HBAR). Both HBAR resonators support a plethora of acoustic modes, which can couple to the qubit near resonantly. We first show qubit-qubit interaction in the multimode system, and finally quantum state transfer where an excitation is swapped from an HBAR mode of one qubit, to an HBAR mode of the other qubit.

Dissipation and the accompanying fluctuations are often seen as detrimental for quantum systems, since they are associated with fast relaxation and loss of phase coherence. However, it has been proposed that a pure state can be prepared if external noise induces suitable downwards transitions, while exciting transitions are blocked. We demonstrate such a refrigeration mechanism in a cavity optomechanical system, where we prepare a mechanical oscillator in its ground state by injecting strong electromagnetic noise at frequencies around the red mechanical sideband of the cavity. The optimum cooling is reached with a noise bandwidth smaller than, but on the order of the cavity decay rate. At higher bandwidths, cooling is less efficient. In the opposite regime where the noise bandwidth becomes comparable to the mechanical damping rate, damping follows the noise amplitude adiabatically, and the cooling is also suppressed.

Measurement-based control, utilizing an active feedback loop, is a standard tool in technology. Feedback control is also emerging as a useful and fundamental tool in quantum technology and in related fundamental studies, where it can be used to prepare and stabilize pure quantum states in various quantum systems. Feedback-cooling of center-of-mass micromechanical oscillators, which typically exhibit a high thermal noise far above the quantum regime has been particularly actively studied and has recently been shown to allow for ground-state cooling using optical measurements. Here, we realize measurement-based feedback operations in an electromechanical system, cooling the mechanical thermal noise down to 3 quanta, limited by added amplifier noise. Counter-intuitively, we also obtain significant cooling when the system is pumped at the blue optomechanical sideband, where the system is unstable without feedback.