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Ultrasensitive measurement of MEMS cantilever displacement below the photon shot noise limit

Benjamin J. Lawrie, Raphael C. Pooser

Published Jan 1, 2014• 1 citation
Publisher

Abstract

We demonstrate sub-shot-noise microcantilever displacement sensitivity using simple differential measurements with multi-spatial-mode squeezed light, a result that may be critical for ultra-trace sensing and imaging applications.
DOI
10.1364/cleo_qels.2014.fm1a.2

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The displacement of micro-electro-mechanical-systems (MEMS) cantilevers is used to measure a broad variety of phenomena in devices ranging from force microscopes to biochemical sensors to thermal imaging systems. We demonstrate the first direct measurement of a MEMS cantilever displacement with a noise floor at 40% of the shot noise limit (SNL). By combining multi-spatial-mode quantum light sources with a simple differential measurement, we show that sub-SNL MEMS displacement sensitivity is highly accessible compared to previous efforts that measured the displacement of macroscopic mirrors with very distinct spatial structures crafted with multiple optical parametric amplifiers and locking loops. These results support a new class of quantum MEMS sensor with an ultimate signal to noise ratio determined by quantum correlations, enabling ultra-trace sensing, imaging, and microscopy applications in which signals were previously obscured by shot noise.
The minimum resolvable signal in sensing and metrology platforms that rely on optical readout fields is increasingly constrained by the standard quantum limit, which is determined by the sum of photon shot noise and back-action noise. A combination of back-action and shot noise reduction techniques will be critical to the development of the next generation of sensors for applications ranging from high-energy physics to biochemistry and for novel microscopy platforms capable of resolving material properties that were previously obscured by quantum noise. This Perspective reviews the dramatic advances made in the use of squeezed light for sub-shot-noise quantum sensing in recent years and highlights emerging applications that enable new science based on signals that would otherwise be obscured by noise at the standard quantum limit.