Spontaneous Symmetry Breaking in Two Coupled Nanomechanical Electron Shuttles

Abstract

We present spontaneous symmetry breaking in a nanoscale version of a setup prolific in classical mechanics: two coupled nanomechanical pendulums. The two pendulums are electron shuttles fabricated as nanopillars and placed between two capacitor plates in a homogeneous electric field. Instead of being mechanically coupled through a spring they exchange electrons, i.e. they shuttle electrons from the source to the drain 'capacitor plate'. Nonzero DC current through this system by external AC excitation is caused via dynamical symmetry breaking. This symmetry-broken current appears at sub- and superharmonics of the fundamental mode of the coupled system.

References in corpus (4)

• Cooling a nanomechanical resonator with quantum back-action
• Strong coupling between single-electron tunneling and nano-mechanical motion
• Noise Squeezing in a Nanomechanical Duffing Resonator
• Direct mechanical mixing in a nanoelectromechanical diode

Cited by in corpus (8)

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• Discrete breathers in an array of self-excited oscillators: exact solutions and stability
• Double coupled electron shuttle
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• Unidirectional direct current in coupled nanomechanical resonators by tunable symmetry breaking
• Nanoelectromechanical rotary current rectifier
• Coupled Nanomechanical Electron Shuttles: Full Stochastic Modeling and Device-Level Simulation