arXiv · 2601.17552
Autonomous phonon maser in levitated spin-mechanics
Abstract
Levitated nanodiamonds hosting a single nitrogen-vacancy (NV) center provide an ultra-low-frequency mechanical mode with widely tunable dissipation and spin backaction under microwave dressing and optical pumping. We demonstrate that the driven NV spin can be tuned to act as an inverted gain medium for the center-of-mass motion, thereby stabilizing an autonomous phonon maser. In the separation-of-timescales regime where spin dynamics is fast, adiabatic elimination yields a reduced mechanical master equation with closed-form, detuning-dependent transition rates and a sharp threshold given by the sign change of the phonon-number damping. For representative levitated-NV parameters, we find that a percent-level dressed-basis inversion is sufficient to reach the threshold, and the small-signal gain can exceed the intrinsic mechanical loss by orders of magnitude. Full master-equation simulations confirm above-threshold self-oscillation and a phase-diffusing, coherent steady state, whose saturation follows the Maxwell-Bloch prediction.
Explore related subjects
Keep this discovery
Explore connections, maps & timelines
Mohamed Hatifi. 2026-01-24. Autonomous phonon maser in levitated spin-mechanics. https://arxiv.org/abs/2601.17552
Cite the original work for its findings. Save a collection to share your selection of sources.