Driving a Macroscopic Oscillator with the Stochastic Motion of a Hydrogen Molecule

Abstract

Putting Noise to Work Extracting energy from a noisy system (one that moves randomly) is possible if a mechanical system can induce periodicity on its motion, a phenomenon called stochastic resonance. Lotze et al. (p. 779 ; see the Perspective by Bockrath ) created stochastic resonances between the cantilever attached to a scanning tunneling microscope tip and a hydrogen molecule adsorbed on a copper surface at cryogenic temperatures. The tunneling electrons at a particular bias voltage could excite the hydrogen molecules and couple their random motion to that of the cantilever, driving periodic oscillations.