Microscale Crystalline Rare-Earth Doped Resonators for Strain-Coupled Optomechanics

Abstract

Rare-earth ion doped crystals for hybrid quantum technologies are an area of growing interest in the solid-state physics community. We have earlier theoretically proposed a hybrid scheme of a mechanical resonator which is fabricated out of a rare-earth doped mono-crystalline structure. The rare-earth ion dopants have absorption energies which are sensitive to crystal strain, and it is thus possible to couple the ions to the bending motion of the crystal cantilever. This type of resonator can be useful for either investigating the laws of quantum physics with material objects or for applications such as sensitive force-sensors. Here, we present the design and fabrication method based on focused-ion-beam etching techniques which we have successfully employed in order to create such microscale resonators, as well as the design of the environment which will allow studying the quantum behavior of the resonators.