2020/07/05 by Hao Tong, Shengyan Liu, Mengdi Zhao +1 · 1 citation
Physics and Astronomy · #Cold Atom Physics and Bose-Einstein Condensates #Interferometry #Macroscopic quantum phenomena #Mechanical and Optical Resonators #Microwave #Phonon #Quantum #Quantum optics #Topological Materials and Phenomena #Topological defect #Topological insulator #Trapping #cond-mat.mes-hall #quant-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.1038/s41467-020-19091-3
published as Nat Commun 11, 5216 (2020)
arxiv created 2020/07/05 · openalex created_date 2020/07/10 · openalex publication_date 2020/10/15 · arxiv updated 2020/10/22 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/06
Phonon trapping has an immense impact in many areas of science and technology, from the antennas of interferometric gravitational wave detectors to chip-scale quantum micro- and nano-mechanical oscillators. It usually relies on the mechanical suspension-an approach, while isolating selected vibrational modes, leads to serious drawbacks for interrogation of the trapped phonons, including limited heat capacity and excess noises via measurements. To circumvent these constraints, we realize a paradigm of phonon trapping using mechanical bound states in the continuum (BICs) with topological features and conducted an in-depth characterization of the mechanical losses both at room and cryogenic temperatures. Our findings of mechanical BICs combining the microwave frequency and macroscopic size unveil a unique platform for realizing mechanical oscillators in both classical and quantum regimes. The paradigm of mechanical BICs might lead to unprecedented sensing modalities for applications such as rare-event searches and the exploration of the foundations of quantum mechanics in unreached parameter spaces.