Upconversion of phonon modes into microwave photons in a lithium niobate bulk acoustic wave resonator coupled to a microwave cavity

The coupling between acoustic vibrations in a lithium niobate bulk acoustic wave resonator and microwave photons of a re-entrant microwave cavity was investigated at a temperature close to 4 K. Coupling was achieved by placing the acoustic resonator in the location of the re-entrant cavity electric field maxima in a symmetric “split-post” configuration with a large overlap between the microwave field and the acoustic mode, allowing acoustic modulations of the microwave frequency. We show that the acoustic modes in this setup retain large inherent quality factors of greater than 106. A maximum optomechanical coupling rate was determined to be g0 = 0.014 mHz, four orders of magnitude larger than previous results obtained using a quartz BAW at 4 K in a similar experimental setup but using a single post-re-entrant cavity resonator.