ICFO Seminar
by Matteo Fadel, ETH Zürich
Mechanical resonators are emerging as an important new platform for quantum science and technologies. Proposals for using them to store, process, and transduce quantum information motivate the development of increasingly sophisticated techniques for controlling mechanical motion in the quantum regime. By interfacing mechanical resonators with superconducting circuits, circuit quantum acoustodynamics can make a variety of important tools available for manipulating and measuring motional quantum states. In this talk, I will show direct measurements of phonon number distributions, parities, and Wigner functions of nonclassical mechanical states, which are achieved by operating our system in the strong dispersive regime. Moreover, I’ll explain how these tools can be exploited to test theories beyond quantum mechanics, such as Planck-scale physics modifications and wave function-collapse models.