Concept

Marie Curie project NEMO (Nanowire Electro-Mechanical-Optical Systems) aims at unifying the optomechanical and electromechanical platforms.The possibility to control macroscopic mechanical objects with radiation pressure has flourished as one of the most promising bench to test quantum mechanics in many body systems. We know that the particle world is governed by quantum mechanics, whereas our everyday, macroscopic world relies on classical mechanics. But where exactly is the border at which reality cannot be described anymore in terms of wavefunctions ? The field of mechanics with nano-objects wants to answer this long standing, fundamental question.If you want more details, here you can find a brief section trying to explain, in a simple language, the concept behind optomechanics.

Impressive results such as active sideband cooling to the ground state of mechanical objects have been achieved both at microwave and near-infrared frequencies. Working at near infrared frequencies offers the use of high-purity sources, such as lasers, and photons have a long coherence length, allowing for long distance telecommunications. On the other hand, microwave photons can be electrically excited and are perfectly integrable on chip, as well as easily coupled to superconductive qubits.

If the two platforms are coupled together, the advantages of both systems can be harnessed and new features implemented, like the realization of quantum repeaters for long-distance qubits telecommunication.

NEMO wants to realize this coupling using a common, one dimensional mechanical resonator shared between the optical and electrical cavities.

To achieve this ambitious goal, the project is following different routes.

The first considers the investigation of electrical properties of heterostructured nanowires in asymmetric gating fields. Our main results include spin control and THz radiation detection and are summarized in the following publications:

  1. L. Romeo, S. Roddaro, A. Pitanti, D. Ercolani, L. Sorba and F. Beltram, Electrostatic spin control in InAs/InP nanowire quantum dots, Nano Lett. 12, 4490 (2012)

  2. A. Pitanti, D. Coquillat, D. Ercolani, L. Sorba, F. Teppe, W. Knap, G. De Simoni, F. Beltram, A. Tredicucci and M. S. Vitiello, Terahetz detection by heterostructed InAs/InSb nanowire based field effect transistors, Appl. Phys. Lett. 101, 141103 (2012)

  3. A. Pitanti, M. S. Vitiello, L. Romeo, D. Coquillat, F. Teppe, W. Knap, D. Ercolani, L. Sorba and A. Tredicucci, Semiconductor nanowire field-effect transistors: towards high-frequency THz detectors, Proc. of SPIE 8469, 84960N (2012)

The second route regards the investigation of classic optomechanical systems which can be capacitively coupled to electrical circuits, in order to achieve full optical and electrical control of the state of the mechanical object. We are currently writing a paper on the topic:

  1. A. Pitanti, J. M. Fink, A. H. Safavi-Naeini, C. U. Lei, J. T. Hill, A. Tredicucci and O. Painter, Linear and nonlinear capacitive coupling in narrow slotted optomechanical photonic crystals, in preparation