Cryogenic Optomechanics with a Si3N4 Membrane and Classical Laser Noise
Abstract
We demonstrate a cryogenic optomechanical system comprising a flexible Si3N4 membrane placed at the center of a free-space optical cavity in a 400 mK cryogenic environment. We observe a mechanical quality factor Q > 4 x 10^6 for the 261-kHz fundamental drum-head mode of the membrane, and a cavity resonance halfwidth of 60 kHz. The optomechanical system therefore operates in the resolved sideband limit. We monitor the membrane's thermal motion using a heterodyne optical circuit capable of simultaneously measuring both of the mechanical sidebands, and find that the observed optical spring and damping quantitatively agree with theory. The mechanical sidebands exhibit a Fano lineshape, and to explain this we develop a theory describing heterodyne measurements in the presence of correlated classical laser noise. Finally, we discuss the use of a passive filter cavity to remove classical laser noise, and consider the future requirements for laser cooling this relatively large and low-frequency mechanical element to very near its quantum mechanical ground state.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.1209.2730,
title = {Cryogenic Optomechanics with a Si3N4 Membrane and Classical Laser Noise},
author = {A. M. Jayich and J. C. Sankey and K. Borkje and D. Lee and C. Yang and M. Underwood and L. Childress and A. Petrenko and S. M. Girvin and J. G. E. Harris},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1209.2730},
year = {2015}
}
Comments
19 pages, 3 figures