Cavity electromechanics with parametric mechanical driving

Microwave optomechanical circuits have been demonstrated to be powerful tools for both exploring fundamental physics of macroscopic mechanical oscillators, as well as being promising candidates for on-chip quantum-limited microwave devices. In most experiments so far, the mechanical oscillator is either used as a passive element and its displacement is detected using the superconducting cavity, or manipulated by intracavity fields. Here, we explore the possibility to directly and parametrically manipulate the mechanical nanobeam resonator of a cavity electromechanical system, which provides additional functionality to the toolbox of microwave optomechanics. In addition to using the cavity as an interferometer to detect parametrically modulated mechanical displacement and squeezed thermomechanical motion, we demonstrate that this approach can realize a phase-sensitive parametric amplifier for intracavity microwave photons. Future perspectives of optomechanical systems with a parametrically driven mechanical oscillator include exotic bath engineering with negative effective photon temperatures, or systems with enhanced optomechanical nonlinearities.

Microwave circuits are interesting tools for microwave optomechanics and quantum information processing. Here, the authors demonstrate a phase-sensitive microwave amplifier by using parametric frequency modulation of a MHz mechanical nanobeam integrated in a superconducting microwave cavity.