Multiharmonic Frequency-Chirped Transducers for Surface-Acoustic-Wave Optomechanics

Abstract

Surface acoustic waves have become a key phononic technology to probe and control a wide range of excitations in condensed matter. Here wide-passband transducers establish stable phase locking between a pulsed source and electrically generated ``nanoquakes'' on a chip. An inherently stable, yet tunable, phase locking between a free-running pulsed laser and the sound wave is used for time-domain optomechanical spectroscopy of a dynamically strained quantum dot. This technique can be directly adapted to any pulsed source of electromagnetic radiation, or even particles, to probe the acoustically driven dynamics of structural, electronic, optical, or magnetic excitations.