Upconversion of Phonon Modes into Microwave Photons in a Lithium Niobate Bulk Acoustic Wave Resonator Coupled to a Microwave Cavity

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates efficient coupling of lithium niobate bulk acoustic wave resonator phonons to microwave photons at cryogenic temperatures, achieving significantly improved optomechanical coupling rates over previous quartz-based systems.

Contribution

It introduces a novel coupling scheme using a split-post re-entrant cavity with lithium niobate, resulting in high-quality acoustic modes and enhanced optomechanical interaction.

Findings

Achieved acoustic mode quality factors >10^6

Measured maximum coupling rate g_0 = 0.014 mHz

Coupling rate surpasses previous quartz BAW results by four orders of magnitude

Abstract

The coupling between acoustic vibrations in a lithium niobate bulk acoustic wave resonator and microwave photons of a re-entrant microwave cavity was investigated at a temperature close to 4 K. Coupling was achieved by placing the acoustic resonator in the location of the re-entrant cavity electric field maxima, in a symmetric "split-post" configuration, with a large overlap between the microwave field and the acoustic mode, allowing acoustic modulations of the microwave frequency. We show that the acoustic modes in this setup retain large inherent quality factors of greater than $10^6$. A maximum optomechanical coupling rate was determined to be $g_0$ = 0.014 mHz, four orders of magnitude larger than previous results obtained using a quartz BAW at 4 K in a similar experimental setup, but using a single post-re-entrant cavity resonator.