IQIM Postdoctoral and Graduate Student Seminar

Title: Design of a high-precision wide-bandwidth optomechanical accelerometer: Or, how I learned to stop worrying and love stress

In this talk I will cover our design and demonstration of a low-noise high-bandwidth optomechanical accelerometer. The accelerometer is fabricated from a beam of highly-stressed thin-film Silicon Nitride with mechanical quality factor over 1 million. Displacements of this beam are sensed via an integrated photonic crystal cavity. We demonstrate acceleration sensing over a 27kHz bandwidth with resolutions exceeding any commercial optical accelerometer system. Furthermore, we show cooling of the mechanical mode down to 1.5K from room temperature through a novel opto-thermo-mechanical process. Finally, I will discuss the prospects for this system to be used in commercial applications as well as reaching the quantum ground state via feedback cooling.