Artist impression of the bosonic Kitaev chain: multiple mechanical string resonators are linked to form a chain using light. Mechanical vibrations are transported and amplified along the chain. Credit: Ella Maru Studio, working alongside colleagues from Germany, Switzerland, and Austria, have realized a new type of metamaterial through which sound waves flow in an unprecedented fashion.
The ‘Kitaev chain’ is a theoretical model that describes the physics of electrons in a superconducting material, specifically a nanowire. The model is famous for predicting the existence of special excitations at the ends of such a nanowire: Majorana zero modes. These have gained intense interest because of their possible use in quantum computers.
“The couplings – the links of the bosonic Kitaev chain – need to be special, and can’t be made with regular springs, for example,” says first author of thepaper Jesse Slim, who graduated cum laude last year. “We realized that we could experimentally create the required links between nanomechanical resonators – small vibrating silicon strings on a chip – by coupling them with the help of forces exerted by light; thus creating ‘optical’ springs.
The observed directional amplification is a topological phenomenon associated with this phase of matter, as the theory collaborators predicted in 2018. They demonstrated a unique experimental signature of the topological nature of the metamaterial: if the chain is closed, such that it forms a ‘necklace’, amplified sound waves in the ring of resonators keep circulating and reach a very high intensity, similar to how strong light beams are generated in lasers.
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