Charge shuttle as a nanomechanical rectifier

We consider the charge shuttle proposed by Gorelik et al. driven by a time-dependent voltage bias. In the case of asymmetric setup, the system behaves as a rectifier. For pure ac drive, the rectified current shows a rather rich frequency dependent response characterized by frequency locking at fractional values of the external frequency. Because of the nonlinear dynamics of the shuttle, rectification is present also for very low frequencies. These effects could be useful to unveil the internal dynamics of nanomechanical devices.