Nanotube mechanical resonators with quality factors of up to 5 million

Carbon nanotube mechanical resonators have attracted considerable interest because of their small mass, the high quality of their surfaces, and the pristine electronic states they host(1-4). However, their small dimensions result in fragile vibrational states that are difficult to measure. Here, we observe quality factors Q as high as 5 x 10(6) in ultra-clean nanotube resonators at a cryostat temperature of 30 mK, where we define Q as the ratio of the resonant frequency over the linewidth. Measuring such high quality factors requires the use of an ultra-low-noise method to rapidly detect minuscule vibrations, as well as careful reduction of the noise of the electrostatic environment. We observe that the measured quality factors fluctuate because of fluctuations of the resonant frequency. We measure record-high quality factors, which are comparable to the highest Q values reported in mechanical resonators of much larger size(5,6), a remarkable result considering that reducing the size of resonators is usually concomitant with decreasing quality factors. The combination of ultra-low mass and very large Q offers new opportunities for ultra-sensitive detection schemes and quantum optomechanical experiments.