Jack Sankey, McGill University, Toward Tabletop, Quantum-limited Mechanical Sensing and New Types of Optomechanical Control

Zoom Details

Seminar
2:00 pm - 3:00 pm

https://ucsb.zoom.us/j/89213433240?pwd=U0MrVUtlL1NkWngwY3RUQS9LSEI2dz09

Meeting ID: 892 1343 3240 and Password: qfSeminar 

Speaker

Jack Sankey
Physics Department
McGill University

Bio

Jack Sankey completed his Ph.D. studying spin transfer torques at microwave frequencies in Dan Ralph's group at Cornell. After graduating (2007), he briefly studied quantum dots in 2DEGs at Princeton, then switched to the field of optomechanics in Jack Harris' group at Yale. In 2012, he joined the McGill Physics Department as an assistant professor, and received tenure in 2018. Sankey is the Tier II Canada Research Chair in Experimental Optomechanics (2012-2022), an Alfred P. Sloan Fellow (2013-2015), and a John David Jackson Teaching Award holder (2018). These days, he and his wife (Prof. Lilian Childress) co-supervise the Quantum Optics and Sensing Lab at McGill, where they study quantum optomechanics, diamond quantum optics, spin transfer, and (together with Prof. Shirin Enger) quantum-limited medical sensors.

Abstract

Mechanical systems represent a fundamental building block in many areas of science and technology, from atomic-scale force sensing to quantum information transduction to kilometer-scale detection of infinitesimal spacetime distortions. All such applications benefit from improved readout sensitivity, and many seek new types of mechanical actuation. In this talk I will discuss our efforts to realize a tabletop, room-temperature optomechanical system capable of sensing the broadband "hiss" associated with the quantum fluctuations of incident laser light -- a milestone toward achieving mechanical sensitivities at (and perhaps beyond) the so-called "standard quantum limit". I will also discuss our progress toward creating a qualitatively different kind of optomechanical system in which light strongly tunes the spatial extent and effective mass of a mechanical mode.