Transport measurements have been an indispensable tool in studying conducting states of matter. However, there exists a large set of interesting states that are insulating, often due to electronic interactions or topology, and are difficult to probe via transport. Here, through an experiment on carbon nanotubes, we present a new approach capable of measuring insulating electronic states through their back action on nanomechanical motion. We use a mechanical pump–probe scheme, allowing the detection of shifts in both frequency and dissipation rate of mechanical vibrational modes, in an overall insulating system. As an example, we use this method to probe the non-conducting configurations of a double quantum dot, allowing us to observe the theoretically predicted signature of nanomechanical back action resulting from a coherently tunnelling electron. The technique opens a new way for measuring the internal electronic structure of a growing variety of insulating states in one- and two-dimensional systems.

传输量测量已成为研究物质传导状态必不可少的工具。但是，存在大量有趣的状态，这些状态通常由于电子交互作用或拓扑结构而处于绝缘状态，并且很难通过传输进行探测。在这里，通过对碳纳米管的实验，我们提出了一种新的方法，该方法能够通过其对纳米机械运动的反作用来测量绝缘电子态。我们使用机械泵浦探针方案，可以检测整个绝缘系统中机械振动模式的频率和耗散率的变化。例如，我们使用这种方法探测双量子点的非导电构型，从而使我们能够观察到理论上预测的由相干隧穿电子产生的纳米机械背作用的特征。