Nanomechanical Systems as Information Processors and Oscillator Networks
Mechanical systems have been used for hundreds of years as clocks and relays - miniaturizing these to the nanoscale reveals interesting physics and offers new applications.
Nanomechanical self-sustained oscillators act as tiny clocks which can synchronize when coupled together. In ideal networks where each oscillator is the same,
synchronization is an example of a spontaneously broken symmetry in time. Such 'broken symmetries' could be useful for constructing low noise frequency sources and neuromorphic
computers. Here I describe experimental states found in a ring of 8 nanomechanical oscillators.
Mechanical relays composed the first computer envisioned by Charles Babbage. Today, nanomechanical relays are envisioned as a "more-than-Moore" technology
since such relays avoid the problem of 'sub-threshold' current leakage due to the Boltzmann factor in carrier diffusion. Recently, I have been interested in
scaling down the energy of such devices to their ultimate limit where only ~1zJ is required to turn on the relay. At this limit, information theory and thermodynamics
clash and noise cannot be ignored.
Nanomechanical systems have extremely low heat capacities at low-temperatures, these may act as the dissipative environment of solid-state computing devices. The physics of information processing within environments
reduced to just a few degrees-of-freedom is not well understood. The advent of new
nanofabrication technologies and nanocalorimetry techniques offers exciting possibilities to study such physics.
