Sensitivity-Bandwidth Limit in a Multimode Optoelectromechanical Transducer

Abstract

Nanomechanical resonators can couple to a large variety of degrees of freedom, and may be easily designed to transduce electromagnetic signals of very different wavelengths, which can be important in quantum information processing. The authors present a hybrid optoelectromechanical transducer based on a Nb-metallized SiN nanomembrane, which is able to detect very weak rf signals with shot-noise-limited optical detection. The sensitivity-bandwidth tradeoff of the device is characterized, and it is found that the transduction bandwidth can be significantly increased by properly engineering the interference between the transduction pathways in a multimode mechanical system.