Optical Backaction-Evading Measurement of a Mechanical Oscillator

Quantum mechanics imposes a limit on the precision of a continuous position measurement of a harmonic oscillator, as a result of quantum backaction arising from quantum fluctuations in the measurement field. A variety of techniques to surpass this standard quantum limit have been proposed, such as variational measurements, stroboscopic quantum non-demolition and two-tone backaction-evading (BAE) measurements. The latter proceed by monitoring only one of the two non-commuting quadratures of the motion. This technique, originally proposed in the context of gravitational wave detection, has not been implemented using optical interferometers to date. Here we demonstrate continuous two-tone BAE measurement in the optical domain of a localized GHz frequency mechanical mode of a photonic crystal nanobeam cryogenically and optomechanically cooled close to the ground state, employing quantum-limited detection. We observe up to 0.67dB (14%) reduction of total measurement noise, thereby demonstrating the viability of BAE measurements for optical ultrasensitive measurements of motion and force in nanomechanical resonators.