We have been awarded a PhD studentship from the Department of Transport to develop a miniature atomic clock. This project is in collaboration with technology company Forsberg Services and runs for up to four years. Unlike standard UK research council studentships, it is automatically open to both UK and EU students. If you think you…
Our paper A coherent nanomechanical oscillator driven by single-electron tunnelling is online in Nature Physics today. When electrical leads are attached to a suspended carbon nanotube, the nanotube’s motion can be detected from changes in the electrical current that passes through it. At the same time, the nanotube experiences a fluctuating electrostatic force depending on…
Our recent experiments have led to three new papers on the arXiv: A coherent nanomechanical oscillator driven by single-electron tunnelling by Yutian Wen describes a carbon nanotube oscillator driven by an electrical current. When we measure a tiny moving object, for example by detecting changes in its conductance, we know the measurement must also disturb…
The group is about to begin an ERC Consolidator Grant for the project “Vibrating carbon nanotubes for probing quantum systems at the mesoscale”. This is a fantastic resource for the next five years of our research.
We are pleased to be bringing the UK Quantum Dot Day to Lancaster. QD Day 2019 is a one-day workshop on all aspects of research into semiconductor quantum dots. Topics will include electrical transport, optical properties, spin physics, quantum devices, and synthesis. This will be the latest in a series of highly successful workshops organised by…
Our new paper Measuring carbon nanotube vibrations using a single-electron transistor as a fast linear amplifier is on the arxiv. Suspended nanotubes can be deflected by tiny forces, including the electrostatic force due to single electrons, but the deflection is difficult to track because the resonance frequency is so high: hundreds of MHz or more. In this…
Our research programme has been selected for an equipment grant from the Faculty of Science and Technology at Lancaster University. This investment is a great start for the group, and will let us buy a state-of-the-art vector signal generator for manipulating quantum states.
Our paper Displacemon electromechanics: How to detect quantum interference in a nanomechanical resonator has been accepted by Physical Review X. This is our first paper from Lancaster! To predict the behaviour of small particles, for example electrons moving through a semiconductor, it is essential to use the concept of quantum superposition—objects may traverse multiple paths simultaneously.…
The Laird group at Lancaster has begun!