Intrinsically accurate sensing with an optomechanical accelerometer

Abstract

We demonstrate a microfabricated optomechanical accelerometer that is capable of percent-level accuracy without external calibration. To achieve this capability, we use a mechanical model of the device behavior that can be characterized by the thermal noise response along with an optical frequency comb readout method that enables high sensitivity, high bandwidth, high dynamic range, and SI-traceable displacement measurements. The resulting intrinsic accuracy was evaluated over a wide frequency range by comparing to a primary vibration calibration system and local gravity. The average agreement was found to be 2.1 % for the calibration system between 0.1 kHz and 15 kHz and better than 0.2 % for the static acceleration. This capability has the potential to replace costly external calibrations and improve the accuracy of inertial guidance systems and remotely deployed accelerometers. Due to the fundamental nature of the intrinsic accuracy approach, it could be extended to other optomechanical transducers, including force and pressure sensors.

arXiv comment13 pages, 7 figures

References in corpus (11)

• A microchip optomechanical accelerometer
• A hybrid on-chip opto-nanomechanical transducer for ultra-sensitive force measurements
• Precision ultrasound sensing on a chip
• High sensitivity optomechanical reference accelerometer over 10 kHz
• Exceptional point enhances sensitivity of optomechanical mass sensors
• Optomechanical mass spectrometry
• Multiplexed sub-Doppler spectroscopy with an optical frequency comb
• Characterization and Testing of a Micro-g Whispering Gallery Mode Optomechanical Accelerometer
• A self-calibrating optomechanical force sensor with femtonewton resolution
• Optomechanical reference accelerometer
• Electro-optic frequency combs for rapid interrogation in cavity optomechanics