Condensed Matter Experiment Seminar

Thursday, May 22, 2003
10:30 a.m., 4079 Smith Lab

Dr. Keith Schwab
Laboratory for Physical Sciences,
National Security Agency

Nanomechanics and Single Electronics:
Putting the mechanics back into Quantum Mechanics

ABSTRACT: The technology now exists for preparing and measuring nanoscale mechanical systems at the quantum limit. I will discuss the status of experiments at LPS, using nanomechanical resonators coupled to various single electron devices (SET and Cooper Pair boxes) which are intended to reveal the full quantum nature of a mechanical resonator: position detection limited by the uncertainty principle, beating the "standard quantum limit" using quantum non-demolition measurement strategy, and most interesting, is the creation and detection of a superposition in position space. This system of mechanical resonator and single electron device forms a beautiful mechanical dual to cavity quantum electrodynamics, a regime we call Quantum Electro-Mechanics (QEM).