Mechanical dissipation below 1$\mu$Hz with a cryogenic diamagnetic-levitated micro-oscillator

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates a cryogenic diamagnetic-levitated micro-oscillator with record-low dissipation of 0.59 μHz at 3K, enabling ultra-sensitive force and acceleration measurements and advancing quantum spin mechanics research.

Contribution

It reports the lowest dissipation in micro- and nano-mechanical systems achieved at cryogenic temperatures, surpassing previous state-of-the-art devices with a novel diamagnetic levitation approach.

Findings

Dissipation as low as 0.59 μHz measured at 3K

Quality factor reaching 2×10^7

Potential applications in quantum spin mechanics

Abstract

Ultralow dissipation plays an important role in sensing applications and exploring macroscopic quantum phenomena using micro-and nano-mechanical systems. We report a diamagnetic-levitated micro-mechanical oscillator operating at a low temperature of 3K with measured dissipation as low as 0.59 $\mu$Hz and a quality factor as high as $2 \times 10^7$. To the best of our knowledge the achieved dissipation is the lowest in micro- and nano-mechanical systems to date, orders of magnitude improvement over the reported state-of-the-art systems based on different principles. The cryogenic diamagnetic-levitated oscillator described here is applicable to a wide range of mass, making it a good candidate for measuring both force and acceleration with ultra-high sensitivity. By virtue of the naturally existing strong magnetic gradient, this system has great potential in quantum spin mechanics study.