Abstract
Nonlinearity in macroscopic mechanical systems may lead to abundant phenomena for fundamental studies and potential applications. However, it is difficult to generate nonlinearity due to the fact that macroscopic mechanical systems follow Hooke's law and respond linearly to external force, unless strong drive is used. Here we propose and experimentally realize high cubic nonlinear response in a macroscopic mechanical system by exploring the anharmonicity in chemical bonding interactions. We demonstrate the high tunability of nonlinear response by precisely controlling the chemical bonding interaction, and realize, at the single-bond limit, a cubic elastic constant of 1 × 1020 N m−3. This enables us to observe the resonator's vibrational bi-states transitions driven by the weak Brownian thermal noise at 6 K. This method can be flexibly applied to a variety of mechanical systems to improve nonlinear responses, and can be used, with further improvements, to explore macroscopic quantum mechanics.
Highlights
Nonlinearity in macroscopic mechanical systems may lead to abundant phenomena for fundamental studies and potential applications
One benefit of low driving force is low driving noise, while in those microand nano-mechanical systems reported in the literature, driving noise is far beyond the system’s intrinsic Brownian thermal noise even at room temperature[1,2,3,4,5,9,11]
What is more demanding is from quantum science, where strong nonlinearity can make quantum effects emerge from a classical harmonic resonator[18]. Such quantum nonlinearity is still elusive in macro-scale mechanical systems due to the naturally weak nonlinear response
Summary
Nonlinearity in macroscopic mechanical systems may lead to abundant phenomena for fundamental studies and potential applications. We demonstrate the high tunability of nonlinear response by precisely controlling the chemical bonding interaction, and realize, at the single-bond limit, a cubic elastic constant of 1 Â 1020 N m À 3. This enables us to observe the resonator’s vibrational bi-states transitions driven by the weak Brownian thermal noise at 6 K. Under weak drive Fdrive, the nonlinear response is negligible due to its cubic dependence on the amplitude x of the resonator, and so the resonator behaves like a simple harmonic oscillator This is the well-known Hooke’s law of elasticity[16]. When driving to the nonlinear bi-states regime, stochastic transitions between bi-states are observed, which are demonstrated to be induced by the intrinsic Brownian thermal noise of the resonator
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