Join the team
PhD thesis : Quantum states of motion of a mechanical resonator

Left: scanning electron microscope image of an optomechanical disk resonator mechanically shielded from the environment (nanofabrication by our team). Right: theoretical Wigner function of a superposition Fock state.
The motion of massive, mesoscopic-scale mechanical resonators can behave quantum mechanically when cooled down to ultra-low temperatures. The exploration of such systems in the quantum regime has interests ranging from fundamental testing of quantum mechanics in mesoscopic massive objects to their use as quantum sensors, or in quantum networks, e.g. for transducing or storing the quantum information.
This PhD project aims at shaping arbitrary target quantum states of motion [1] of an optomechanical resonator such as the microdisk pictured on the right and developed in our group. The mechanical quantum information can be encoded in the device through its interaction with light [2], and then characterized through optical tomographic reconstruction [3]. This work will also consider increasing the dimensionality by including several optomechanical resonators, thereby involving entanglement between massive objects.
Methods and techniques: Quantum optomechanics, single-photon counting, quantum state tomography, cryogenics
[1] MR Vanner, M Aspelmeyer and MS Kim, PRL 110, 010504 (2013).
[2] I Favero and K Karrai, Nat. Phot. 3, 201 (2009). M Aspelmeyer, T Kippenberg and F Marquardt, Rev. Mod. Phys. 86, 1391 (2014).
[3] MR Vanner, I Pikovski, and MS Kim, Ann. Phys. 527 (2015).
Contact : Adrien Borne
À lire aussi

Cavity-enhanced fractional quantum Hall phases and cavity-modified spin splittings
A collaboration between the Equipe Théorie at MPQ and scientists from ETH Zurich and the Flatiron Institute has demonstrated, both theoretically and experimentally, that giant vacuum fields confined in a split-ring resonator cavity can profoundly alter...

Unravelling the nonlinear generation of designer vortices with dielectric metasurfaces
Researchers from the DON team have demonstrated and analyzed the generation of high-purity second-harmonic vortices with dielectric metasurfaces. These results are published in Light: Science and Applications. Vortex beams are currently drawing a great deal of...

Thermal stability of high-entropy nanoalloys: reality or chimera?
By studying at the atomic scale the thermal behavior of nanoparticles composed of gold, cobalt, copper, nickel and platinum, scientists have revealed that the stability of these so-called high-entropy nanoalloys is much lower than expected, as gold and copper...

On-chip generation of spatial entanglement
The QITE team just published in Phys. Rev. Lett. its work on the generation of spatial entanglement in nonlinear waveguide arrays, in collaboration with C2N and INPHYNI. Combining the generation and manipulation of complex quantum states of light on a single chip is a...