Our preprint “Nonlinear Dynamics and Mechanical Frequency Combs with a Meissner-levitated Micromagnet” is now on arXiv!

This work was a collaboration with Benjamin Stickler’s group at Ulm University. Thanks to co-first authors Trisha Madhavan and Vanessa Wachter, and to DaLi Schaefer, Addison NewRingeisen, Zhiyuan Wei, Frankie Fung, Ben Stickler, and Misha Lukin.

Abstract:

Nonlinearities in multimode mechanical systems can give rise to rich dynamical phenomena with great potential for sensing applications and for future quantum experiments. We demonstrate that the coupled center-of-mass and rotational motion of a Meissner-levitated micromagnet offer a promising platform for nonlinear dynamics, combining low dissipation, magnetic tunability, strong intrinsic Duffing nonlinearities, and nonlinear intermodal couplings. We use this tunability to demonstrate the generation of a mechanical frequency comb in the micromagnet dynamics, realized by parametric excitation of two translational modes followed by cascaded nonlinear frequency mixing, which produces a phononic comb with tunable spacing. At large amplitudes, nonlinear coupling to a low-frequency librational mode of the magnet leads to parametric excitation and phase locking of that mode, generating a dense spectral fine structure at subharmonics of the drive. These results establish levitated micromagnets as a platform for nonlinear multimode mechanics, with potential applications in precision sensing and quantum-limited metrology.