We experimentally demonstrate the high-sensitivity optical monitoring of a micro-mechanical resonator and its cooling by active control. Coating a low-loss mirror upon the resonator, we have built an optomechanical sensor based on a very high-finesse cavity (30000). We have measured the thermal noise of the resonator with a quantum-limited sensitivity at the 10^-19 m/rootHz level, and cooled the resonator down to 5K by a cold-damping technique. Applications of our setup range from quantum optics experiments to the experimental demonstration of the quantum ground state of a macroscopic mechanical resonator.
@article{arxiv.quant-ph/0605174,
title = {High-sensitivity optical monitoring of a micro-mechanical resonator with a quantum-limited optomechanical sensor},
author = {O. Arcizet and P. -F. Cohadon and T. Briant and M. Pinard and A. Heidmann and J. -M. Mackowski and C. Michel and L. Pinard and O. Francais and L. Rousseau},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:quant-ph/0605174},
year = {2009}
}