Coupling graphene mechanical resonators to superconducting microwave cavities

Abstract

Graphene is an attractive material for nanomechanical devices because it allows for exceptional properties, such as high frequencies and quality factors, and low mass. An outstanding challenge, however, has been to obtain large coupling between the motion and external systems for efficient readout and manipulation. Here, we report on a novel approach, in which we capacitively couple a high-Q graphene mechanical resonator ($Q\sim 10^5$) to a superconducting microwave cavity. The initial devices exhibit a large single-photon coupling of $\sim 10$ Hz. Remarkably, we can electrostatically change the graphene equilibrium position and thereby tune the single photon coupling, the mechanical resonance frequency and the sign and magnitude of the observed Duffing nonlinearity. The strong tunability opens up new possibilities, such as the tuning of the optomechanical coupling strength on a time scale faster than the inverse of the cavity linewidth. With realistic improvements, it should be possible to enter the regime of quantum optomechanics.

19 pages, 5 figures. Nano Lett. (2014)

References in corpus (12)

• Boron nitride substrates for high-quality graphene electronics
• Sideband Cooling Micromechanical Motion to the Quantum Ground State
• Making graphene visible
• A Mechanical Mass Sensor with Yoctogram Resolution
• Nanomechanical motion measured with precision beyond the standard quantum limit
• Circuit Quantum Electrodynamics with a Spin Qubit
• Optomechanical coupling between a multilayer graphene mechanical resonator and a superconducting microwave cavity
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• Stamp transferred suspended graphene mechanical resonators for radio-frequency electrical readout
• Quantum Information Processing with Nanomechanical Qubits
• Graphene optomechanics realized at microwave frequencies

Cited by in corpus (6)

• Mechanics of freely-suspended ultrathin layered materials
• Time-domain response of atomically thin $\mathrm{Mo}{\mathrm{S}}_2$ nanomechanical resonators
• Nonlinear phononics using atomically thin membranes
• Tailoring 10 nm Scale Suspended Graphene Junctions and Quantum Dots
• Electro-mechanical control of an optical emitter using graphene
• Control of resonant frequency by currents in graphene: Effect of Dirac field on deflection