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A Few Photons Became a Mechanical State With 76 Percent Efficiency

A millikelvin optomechanical crystal mapped weak optical pulses into a localized GHz mode and back.

Published Updated Story ID: mp-2026-09-05-019
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Summary

A millikelvin optomechanical crystal mapped weak optical pulses into a localized GHz mode and back.

The experiment reports 0.76 conversion efficiency, a 7.3-microsecond storage lifetime and bandwidth above 4.5 MHz near the single-quantum regime. Correlation measurements support coherent retrieval, though the added thermal occupation remains nine quanta.

Why it matters

A millikelvin optomechanical crystal mapped weak optical pulses into a localized GHz mode and back.

Limits and context

No additional limitation was separately recorded.

Key claims

  1. A millikelvin optomechanical crystal mapped weak optical pulses into a localized GHz mode and back.

    Evidence: source-2026-09-05-021

Sources

  1. arXiv preprint 2609.04150arXiv · primary research

Corrections

No corrections have been recorded for this story.