Nonlinear modal coupling in a high-stress doubly-clamped nanomechanical resonator

Nonlinear Switching Dynamics in a Nanomechanical Resonator

The oscillatory response of nonlinear systems exhibits characteristic phenomena such as multistability [1], discontinuous jumps [2, 3] and hysteresis [3]. These can be utilized in applications leading, e.g., to precise frequency measurement [4], mixing [5], memory elements [6, 7], reduced noise characteristics in an oscillator [8] or signal amplification [9, 10, 11, 12]. Approaching the quantum...

Mass detection with a nonlinear nanomechanical resonator.

Nanomechanical resonators having small mass, high resonance frequency, and low damping rate are widely employed as mass detectors. We study the performance of such a detector when the resonator is driven into a region of nonlinear oscillations. We predict theoretically that in this region the system acts as a phase-sensitive mechanical amplifier. This behavior can be exploited to achieve noise ...

Linear and nonlinear coupling between transverse modes of a nanomechanical resonator

Basins of attraction of a nonlinear nanomechanical resonator.

We present an experiment that systematically probes the basins of attraction of two fixed points of a nonlinear nanomechanical resonator and maps them out with high resolution. We observe a separatrix which progressively alters shape for varying drive strength and changes the relative areas of the two basins of attraction. The observed separatrix is blurred due to ambient fluctuations, includin...

Classical to quantum transition of a driven nonlinear nanomechanical resonator

Much experimental effort is invested these days in fabricating nanoelectromechanical systems (NEMS) that are sufficiently small, cold and clean, so as to approach quantum mechanical behavior as their typical quantum energy scale h̄ becomes comparable with that of the ambient thermal energy kBT . Such systems will hopefully enable one to observe the quantum behavior of human-made objects, and te...