Spectral diffusion of nanomechanical resonators due to single quantum defects
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Nanomechanical resonators promise diverse applications from mass spectrometry to quantum information processing, requiring long phonon lifetimes and frequency stability. Although two-level-system (TLS) defects govern dissipation at millikelvin temperatures, the nature of frequency fluctuations remains poorly understood. In nanoscale devices, where acoustic fields are confined to subwavelength volumes, strong coupling to individual TLSs should dominate over defect ensemble effects. In this work, we monitor fast spectral diffusion of phononic crystal nanomechanical resonators while varying the temperature (10 mK--1 K), drive power (${10}^{2}$--${10}^{5}$ phonons), and phononic band structure. We consistently observe random telegraph signals (RTSs), which we attribute to state transitions of individual TLSs. The spectral diffusion is well explained by mechanical coupling to individual far-off-resonant TLSs, which are either thermally excited or strongly coupled to thermal fluctuators. Understanding this fundamental decoherence process, particularly its RTS structure, opens a clear path toward noise suppression for quantum and sensing applications.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".