Angular displacement readout of a mechanical oscillator with a guided mode resonance

Abstract:Measuring the angular displacement of a mechanical oscillator is a ubiquitous task; however, the multimode nature of angular optomechanical coupling makes coherent signal enhancement challenging. Here we demonstrate coherently enhanced angular displacement readout with an integrated guided mode resonance (GMR) structure, applying it to precision readout of a nanomechanical oscillator. Specifically, we fabricate subwavelength gratings into 100-nm-thick Si$_3$N$_4$ membranes and record their vibration by direct transmission measurements. The narrow linewidth $\approx 2.5\;\text{mrad}$ of the GMR enables a shot-noise-limited displacement imprecision of $ 10^{-9}\;\text{rad}/\sqrt{\text{Hz}}$ with nanowatts of optical power, sufficient to resolve the thermal motion of a $Q\approx 10^6$ torsion mode with a signal-to-noise ratio of 47 dB. Control experiments based on polarization and wavelength detuning confirm that the measured signal arises from GMR-mediated transduction. These results establish guided-mode resonance as an on-chip approach to angular displacement readout in quantum optomechanical sensors.

Optics (physics.optics); Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics (cond-mat.mes-hall); Instrumentation and Detectors (physics.ins-det); Quantum Physics (quant-ph)

arXiv:2608.14447 [physics.optics]

(or arXiv:2608.14447v1 [physics.optics] for this version)

https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2608.14447 arXiv-issued DOI via DataCite (pending registration)