Cooling phonons with phonons: Acoustic reservoir engineering with silicon-vacancy centers in diamond

Abstract

The authors propose a new method for realizing mechanical ground-state cooling that could generate quantum entanglement at convenient temperatures (1 K). They consider a diamond beam bending above a magnetic tip (the beam is clamped at one end and free to move at the other). Near the oscillating end, they insert a lattice defect, specifically a silicon-vacancy center. As the beam bends, the defect experiences a varying magnetic field which may flip its spin by absorbing mechanical energy from the low-frequency flexural motion of the beam. At the same time, the center is coupled to high-frequency compression modes, which locally distort the surrounding lattice and lead to a fast relaxation of the center's electronic states. By stimulating the defect with microwave fields, these two coupling mechanisms can be connected and an energy flow from the bending motion into the high-frequency phonon reservoir is induced. According to predictions made here, the mechanical temperature of the beam -- how much it bends -- can then be tuned via optimizing these alternating absorption and reemission processes in the same way the temperature of atoms can be controlled with light.