Optical dilution and feedback cooling of a gram-scale oscillator to 6.9 mK
Quantum Physics
2009-11-13 v2
Abstract
We report on use of a radiation pressure induced restoring force, the optical spring effect, to optically dilute the mechanical damping of a 1 gram suspended mirror, which is then cooled by active feedback (cold damping). Optical dilution relaxes the limit on cooling imposed by mechanical losses, allowing the oscillator mode to reach a minimum temperature of 6.9 mK, a factor of ~40000 below the environmental temperature. A further advantage of the optical spring effect is that it can increase the number of oscillations before decoherence by several orders of magnitude. In the present experiment we infer an increase in the dynamical lifetime of the state by a factor of ~200.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.0705.1018,
title = {Optical dilution and feedback cooling of a gram-scale oscillator to 6.9 mK},
author = {Thomas Corbitt and Christopher Wipf and Timothy Bodiya and David Ottaway and Daniel Sigg and Nicolas Smith and Stanley Whitcomb and Nergis Mavalvala},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:0705.1018},
year = {2009}
}