Title: Evidence for structural damping in a high-stress silicon nitride nanobeam and its implications for quantum optomechanics,
Abstract: We resolve the thermal motion of a high-stress silicon nitride nanobeam at
frequencies far below its fundamental flexural resonance (3.4 MHz) using
cavity-enhanced optical interferometry. Over two decades, the displacement
spectrum is well-modeled by that of a damped harmonic oscillator driven by a
$1/f$ thermal force, suggesting that the loss angle of the beam material is
frequency-independent. The inferred loss angle at 3.4 MHz, $\phi = 4.5\cdot
10^{-6}$, agrees well with the quality factor ($Q$) of the fundamental beam
mode ($\phi = Q^{-1}$). In conjunction with $Q$ measurements made on higher
order flexural modes, and accounting for the mode dependence of stress-induced
loss dilution, we find that the intrinsic (undiluted) loss angle of the beam
changes by less than a factor of 2 between 50 kHz and 50 MHz. We discuss the
impact of such "structural damping" on experiments in quantum optomechanics, in
which the thermal force acting on a mechanical oscillator coupled to an optical
cavity is overwhelmed by radiation pressure shot noise. As an illustration, we
show that structural damping reduces the bandwidth of ponderomotive squeezing.