Measuring and controlling nanomechanical vibrations with an electron beam

Pierre Verlot (team PNEC) ), with colleagues from the Laboratoire de Physique Statistique (ENS, Paris) have published an article entitled "Dynamical backaction cooling with free electrons" in the journal Nature Communications.

Nanomechanics is the field of Physics that studies the origin and nature of mechanical motion at the nanoscale. The major challenge of this research is related to the extremely reduced dimensions of the nanomechanical systems, which make them difficult to detect and control. While important progress have been recently made in this domain, the measurement methods that have been so far proposed remain difficult to implement, with reduced application range. The authors have demonstrated that focused electron beams can be used in order to accurately detect and control the motion of vibrating nanostructures, Their result show that the conditions of application of their method are identical to the one required in standard electron microscopy, opening the perspective of a large and swift dissemination of their work in nanosciences.

20/11/2015