Squeezing of thermal fluctuations in a driven nanomechanical resonator

Abstract

Classical squeezing allows manipulating the noise distribution of thermal fluctuations by suppressing the noise along one of the two quadratures. Squeezing of thermal fluctuations has mostly been studied in parametric amplifiers, including realizations based on microwave [1,2] or mechanical [3,4] resonators as well as trapped ions [5], and is typically detected in a homodyne measurement. Here we show thermal squeezing of a nanomechanical resonator of ultra-high quality factor at room temperature. Squeezing is accomplished by driving the resonator in the nonlinear Duffing regime. Contrary to previous studies [6-8], auxilliary noise injection into the system is not required. Remarkably, the squeezing manifests itself directly in the power spectrum without the need of a homodyne measurement. Classical noise squeezing promises to reduce heating in computers [9], and represents an important asset for precision sensing [5,10,11] enabling the advent of a new generation of nanomechanical detectors at room temperature.