Voltage-tunable, femtometer-precision plasmo-mechanical displacement at fixed gap size

TL;DR

This paper introduces a method for continuously tuning plasmo-mechanical displacement and squeezing at a fixed gap size using electrical signals, achieving femtometer precision and rapid response times.

Contribution

It presents a novel electrical tuning approach for plasmo-mechanical systems that does not require physical movement of the mechanical component, enabling precise control of coupling and squeezing.

Findings

Displacement tuning of about 30 femtometers achieved.

Coupling strength tunable by 100x with 1 V voltage.

Response time in the picosecond range.

Abstract

We propose an elegant method for continuous electrical-tuning of plasmo-mechanical displacement and squeezing without changing plasmonic gap size. Recent experiments bend the mechanical oscillator (cantilever) in units of nm via electrostatic actuators. We do not bend the cantilever but merely electrically-tune the gap intensity, so plasmo-mechanical coupling, via Fano resonance. This allows continuous displacement tuning in units of mechanical oscillator length that is about 30 fm in the experiments. This way, coupling strength can be tuned by 2 orders-of-magnitude via only a 1 V potential difference. Response time is picoseconds. Moreover, quadrature-squeezing (entanglement) of the oscillator can also be tuned continuously.