A Topological Parametric Phonon Oscillator

Adv Mater. 2024 May 7:e2309015. doi: 10.1002/adma.202309015. Online ahead of print.
[Article in Italian]

Abstract

Topological bosonic systems have recently aroused intense interests in exploring exotic phenomena that have no counterparts in electronic systems. The squeezed bosonic interaction in these systems is particularly interesting, because it can modify the vacuum fluctuations of topological states, drive them into instabilities, and lead to topological parametric oscillators. However, these phenomena remain experimentally elusive because of limited nonlinearities in most existing topological bosonic systems. Here, a topological parametric phonon oscillator is experimentally realized based on a nonlinear nanoelectromechanical Dirac-vortex cavity with strong squeezed interaction. Specifically, the Dirac-vortex cavity is parametrically driven to provide phase-sensitive amplification for topological phonons, leading to the observation of coherent parametric phonon oscillation above the threshold. Additionally, it is confirmed that the random frequency variation caused by fabrication disorders can be suppressed effectively by increasing the cavity size, while the free spectral range reduces at a much slower rate, which benefit the realization of large-area single-mode lasers. Our results represent an important advance in experimental investigations of topological physics with large bosonic nonlinearities and parametric gain. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.

Keywords: mechanical metamaterials; nanoelectromechanics; parametric oscillation; strong squeezed interaction; topological Dirac‐vortex states.

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  • English Abstract