Hanbury Brown and Twiss interferometry of single phonons from an optomechanical resonator

Nano- and micromechanical solid-state quantum devices have become a focus of attention. Reliably generating nonclassical states of their motion is of interest both for addressing fundamental questions about macroscopic quantum phenomena and for developing quantum technologies in the domains of sensi...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Science (American Association for the Advancement of Science) 2017-10, Vol.358 (6360), p.203-206
Main Authors: Hong, Sungkun, Riedinger, Ralf, Marinković, Igor, Wallucks, Andreas, Hofer, Sebastian G., Norte, Richard A., Aspelmeyer, Markus, Gröblacher, Simon
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Hybrid systems
Interferometry
Optical control
Phonons
Piezoelectricity
Platforms
Quantum mechanics
Quantum phenomena
Superconductivity
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:Nano- and micromechanical solid-state quantum devices have become a focus of attention. Reliably generating nonclassical states of their motion is of interest both for addressing fundamental questions about macroscopic quantum phenomena and for developing quantum technologies in the domains of sensing and transduction. We used quantum optical control techniques to conditionally generate single-phonon Fock states of a nanomechanical resonator. We performed a Hanbury Brown and Twiss–type experiment that verified the nonclassical nature of the phonon state without requiring full state reconstruction. Our result establishes purely optical quantum control of a mechanical oscillator at the single-phonon level.
ISSN:0036-8075
1095-9203
DOI:10.1126/science.aan7939