Resonantly Induced Friction and Frequency Combs in Driven Nanomechanical Systems

We propose a new mechanism of friction in resonantly driven vibrational systems. The form of the friction force follows from the time- and spatial-symmetry arguments. We consider a microscopic mechanism of this resonant force in nanomechanical systems. The friction can be negative, leading to the onset of self-sustained oscillations of the amplitude and phase of forced vibrations, which result in a frequency comb in the power spectrum.