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Autonomous phonon maser in levitated spin mechanics

Mohamed Hatifi*

  • *Contact author: hatifi@fresnel.fr
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Phys. Rev. A 113, L041501 – Published 10 April, 2026

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/5sb4-913d

Abstract

Levitated nanodiamonds hosting a single nitrogen-vacancy (NV) center provide an ultralow-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 timescale-separation regime where the 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.

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Phys. Rev. A 113, L041501– Published 10 April, 2026
  • Received 30 December 2025
  • Accepted 26 March 2026
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