English

Quantum limits of cold damping with optomechanical coupling

Quantum Physics 2009-11-07 v2

Abstract

Thermal noise of a mirror can be reduced by cold damping. The displacement is measured with a high-finesse cavity and controlled with the radiation pressure of a modulated light beam. We establish the general quantum limits of noise in cold damping mechanisms and we show that the optomechanical system allows to reach these limits. Displacement noise can be arbitrarily reduced in a narrow frequency band. In a wide-band analysis we show that thermal fluctuations are reduced as with classical damping whereas quantum zero-point fluctuations are left unchanged. The only limit of cold damping is then due to zero-point energy of the mirror

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.quant-ph/0107138,
  title  = {Quantum limits of cold damping with optomechanical coupling},
  author = {Jean-Michel Courty and A. Heidmann and M. Pinard},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:quant-ph/0107138},
  year   = {2009}
}

Comments

10 pages, 3 figures, RevTeX