PhD and Postdoctoral Scholarships in Microwave Optomechanics, Delft University of Technology, Netherlands (2015-2016)

We currently have PhD and Postdoctoral positions available for studying microwave optomechanics. In the project, you will use microwave cavities cooled to milliKelvin temperatures to control and manipulate the motion of mechanical resonators made from membranes and strings at the quantum level.

The projects involve studying mechanical resonators made from drums and strings in which the motion of the drum or string is coupled to photons trapped in a high-Q superconducting microwave cavity.

In the project, your task will be to fabricate mechanical devices with high mechanical quality-factor (high-Q) using the state-of-the-art cleanroom facilities at the Kavli NanoLab in Delft. For the mechanical resonator, we will explore bottom-up routes such as exfoliated 2-dimensional crystals and suspended carbon nanotubes, and also more conventional materials such as high-stress silicon nitride or suspended superconducting membranes.

To probe the motion of these mechanical objects, you will couple their motion to photons trapped in high-Q superconducting cavities, a technique known as microwave optomechanics. Injecting microwave photons into the cavity, you will detect the position of the mechanical object a precision limited by quantum uncertainty, and use the radiation pressure of microwave “light” to control and manipulate the mechanical motion.

The goal of the project will be to bring the mechanical motion into the quantum regime, and ultimately to build “quantum superpostions” of mechanical motion in which the drums and strings are vibrating both up and down at the same time, with potential applications as a memory element of a quantum computer.

Further details:
http://steelelab.tudelft.nl