Electro-mechanical tuning of high-Q bulk acoustic phonon modes at cryogenic temperatures

Abstract

We investigate the electromechanical properties of quartz bulk acoustic wave resonators at extreme cryogenic temperatures. By applying a DC bias voltage, we demonstrate broad frequency tuning of high-Q phonon modes in a quartz bulk acoustic wave cavity at cryogenic temperatures of 4 K and 20 mK. More than 100 line-widths of tuning of the resonance peak without any degradation in loaded quality factor, which are as high as 1.73×109, is seen for high order overtone modes. For all modes and temperatures, the observed coefficient of frequency tuning is ≈ 3.5 mHz/V per overtone number n corresponding to a maximum of 255.5 mHz/V for the n = 73 overtone mode. No degradation in the quality factor is observed for any value of an applied biasing field.