Solution

ID: past-exam-of-the-physics-a-course-of-the-university-of-cambridge/2017/paper-1/section-d/d12/solution

Ideal spectrum. Write , with . The overdamped harmonic-trap power spectrum is a Lorentzian line shape:
Thus its log-log plot is horizontal at low frequency and approaches slope at high frequency, changing around . The left panel below compares two characteristic frequencies with the same illustrative ; a common numerator is explicitly assumed for this sketch. Their high-frequency tails coincide and their low-frequency plateaux differ as .
Figure 1.
Ideal Lorentzian spectra at two corner frequencies and the measured spectrum with its graphical corner estimate
. Details.
The right panel plots all nine original data points, including the very-low-frequency excess and the highest-frequency suppression. It also shows the ideal curve inferred only from the requested intermediate range.
Graphical corner estimate. Between roughly and the measured power spectral density is approximately the plateau . At and ,
so the descending asymptote is with . The graphical corner frequency of a Lorentzian spectrum is where these asymptotes intersect:
Independently, the measured value is exactly the half-plateau condition . Both graphical readings agree. The inferred ideal curve is approximately
Low-frequency excess and recording duration. The two lowest-frequency measurements increase approximately as , whereas the ideal trapped oscillator tends to a constant plateau. This resembles flicker noise or slow apparatus drift superposed on the motion. The transimpedance amplifier, detector or environment could contribute; the spectrum alone does not identify the source uniquely. It would be incorrect to attribute that whole excess to the ideal Brownian oscillator.
A finite record of duration has ordinary Fourier frequency resolution of order . Resolving the lowest tabulated frequency therefore requires at least
This is a formal lower bound corresponding to about one cycle; a reliable noise-spectrum estimate normally needs a substantially longer record and averaging.
Sampling. The largest reported frequency is . The Nyquist–Shannon sampling theorem therefore gives the Nyquist lower bound
In practice choose a rate above , with an analogue anti-aliasing filter suppressing unmeasured content above half the sampling rate. Exact equality cannot recover an arbitrary pure sinusoid precisely at the boundary for every phase; it is the limiting lower-bound answer rather than a comfortable practical sampling design.
High-frequency departure and amplifier design. Extrapolating the fitted tail to predicts approximately , while the measured value is . The observed drop from to has effective logarithmic slope , much steeper than the ideal .
A detector or amplifier bandwidth limit, or intentional filtering before digitization, can explain such suppression. For a linear filter the spectral density transformation under a linear filter is , so the last point corresponds approximately to an additional relative voltage gain , if attributed entirely to the readout transfer function. One additional point does not determine a unique filter order or identify the circuit responsible.
Rolling off an amplifier's gain beyond the useful signal band reduces integrated high-frequency noise, suppresses interference, and helps prevent aliasing in the analogue-to-digital converter. Limiting high-frequency loop gain can also improve feedback stability and suppress unwanted oscillation. The cutoff must retain the frequencies needed for the measurement; excessive filtering would distort the desired fluctuation spectrum itself.

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