Soft-Clamped Silicon Nitride String Resonators at Millikelvin Temperatures

Phys Rev Lett. 2022 Sep 2;129(10):104301. doi: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.129.104301.

Abstract

We demonstrate that soft-clamped silicon nitride strings with a large aspect ratio can be operated at mK temperatures. The quality factors (Q) of two measured devices show consistent dependency on the cryostat temperature, with soft-clamped mechanical modes reaching Q>10^{9} at roughly 46 mK. For low optical readout power, Q is found to saturate, indicating good thermalization between the sample and the stage it is mounted on. Our best device exhibits a calculated force sensitivity of 9.6 zN/sqrt[Hz] and a thermal decoherence time of 0.38 s, which bode well for future applications such as nanomechanical force sensing.