Looking Inside Micro- and Nano-Mechanical Pillar Resonators: A Picosecond Ultrasonics Approach

Pillar-shaped Gallium arsenide (GaAs) micromechanical resonators are fabricated, and the feasibility to measure the inside of the pillars in the axial direction with laser-induced GHz ultrasound based on picosecond ultrasonics is tested. Measurements on the pillars with head sizes in the µm range show excellent agreement with theoretical predictions.

Radiation pressure measurement using a macroscopic oscillator in an ambient environment

In contrast to current efforts to quantify the radiation pressure of light using nano-micromechanical resonators in cryogenic conditions, we proposed and experimentally demonstrated the radiation pressure measurement in ambient conditions by utilizing a macroscopic mechanical longitudinal oscillator with an effective mass of the order of 20 g. The light pressure on a mirror attached to the oscillator was recorded in a Michelson interferometer and results showed, within the experimental accuracy of 3.9%, a good agreement with the harmonic oscillator model without free parameters.

Single-electron detection utilizing coupled nonlinear microresonators

Since the discovery of the electron, the accurate detection of electrical charges has been a dream of the scientific community. Owing to some remarkable advantages, micro/nanoelectromechanical system-based resonators have been used to design electrometers with excellent sensitivity and resolution. Here, we demonstrate a novel ultrasensitive charge detection method utilizing nonlinear coupling in two micromechanical resonators. We achieve single-electron charge detection with a high resolution up to 0.197 ± 0.056 $${\mathrm{e}}/\sqrt {{\mathrm{Hz}}}$$ e / Hz at room temperature. Our findings provide a simple strategy for measuring electron charges with extreme accuracy.