Nonlinear Dynamics of Nanomechanical Drum Resonators due to Casimir Force

Abstract

Casimir force is an attractive force hat arises due to quantum vacuum fluctuations of the electromagnetic field between two reflective surfaces. In ideal cases, it scales with 1/d^4 where d is the separation distance between two surfaces. In micro and nano mechanical systems, the Casimir force can be strong enough to push the device to the nonlinear regime with low drive powers. In this thesis, we model the effect of the Casimir force on the dynamics of a mechanical resonator to characterize the nonlinear response of drum resonators. We introduce the optomechanical setup for our measurements and successfully match the experimental results to the simulated model where we observe a strong softening nonlinearity, associated with the Casimir force.