Quantum limit in resonant vacuum tunneling transducers

Abstract

We propose an electromechanical transducer based on a resonant-tunneling configuration that, with respect to the standard tunneling transducers, allows larger tunneling currents while using the same bias voltage. The increased current leads to an increase of the shot noise and an increase of the momentum noise which determine the quantum limit in the system under monitoring. Experiments with micromachined masses at 4.2 K could show dominance of the momentum noise over the Brownian noise, allowing observation of the quantum-mechanical noise at the mesoscopic scale.