Research output: Contribution to Journal/Magazine › Journal article › peer-review
Article number | 013104 |
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<mark>Journal publication date</mark> | 1/07/2013 |
<mark>Journal</mark> | Applied Physics Letters |
Issue number | 1 |
Volume | 103 |
Number of pages | 3 |
Publication Status | Published |
<mark>Original language</mark> | English |
We present a high-sensitivity measurement technique for mechanical nanoresonators. Due to intrinsic nonlinear effects, different flexural modes of a nanobeam can be coupled while driving each of them on resonance. This mode-coupling scheme is dispersive and one mode resonance shifts with respect to the motional amplitude of the other. The same idea can be implemented on a single mode, exciting it with two slightly detuned signals. This two-tone scheme is used here to measure the resonance lineshape of one mode through a frequency shift in the response of the device. The method acts as an amplitude-to- frequency transduction which ultimately suffers only from phase noise of the local oscillator used and of the nanomechanical device itself. We also present a theory which reproduces the data without free parameters.