Related papers: Optical self-cooling of a membrane oscillator in a…
Ponderomotive squeezing of light, where a mechanical oscillator creates quantum correlations between the phase and amplitude of the interacting light field, is a canonical signature of the quantum regime of optomechanics. At room…
The radiation pressure of light can act to damp and cool the vibrational motion of a mechanical resonator. In understanding the quantum limits of this cooling, one must consider the effect of shot noise fluctuations on the final thermal…
Exploiting quantum effects of mechanical motion, such as backaction evading measurements or squeezing, requires preparation of the oscillator in a high-purity state. The largest state purities in optomechanics to date have relied on…
Sympathetic cooling with ultracold atoms and atomic ions enables ultralow temperatures in systems where direct laser or evaporative cooling is not possible. It has so far been limited to the cooling of other microscopic particles, with…
We review and study the roles of quantum and classical fluctuations in recent cavity-optomechanical experiments which have now reached the quantum regime (mechanical phonon occupancy < 1) using resolved sideband laser cooling. In…
Optomechanical cavities in the well-resolved-sideband regime are ideally suited for the study of a myriad of quantum phenomena with mechanical systems, including backaction-evading measurements, mechanical squeezing, and generation of…
We present an experimental study of dynamical back-action cooling of the fundamental vibrational mode of a thin semitransparent membrane placed within a high-finesse optical cavity. We study how the radiation pressure interaction modifies…
We study high-stress SiN films for reaching the quantum regime with mesoscopic oscillators connected to a room-temperature thermal bath, for which there are stringent requirements on the oscillators' quality factors and frequencies. Our SiN…
A promising route to novel quantum technologies are hybrid quantum systems, which combine the advantages of several individual quantum systems. We have realized a hybrid atomic-mechanical experiment consisting of a SiN membrane oscillator…
Dissipation and the accompanying fluctuations are often seen as detrimental for quantum systems, since they are associated with fast relaxation and loss of phase coherence. However, it has been proposed that a pure state can be prepared if…
Optomechanical SiN nano-oscillators in high-finesse Fabry-Perot cavities can be used to investigate the interaction between mechanical and optical degree of freedom for ultra-sensitive metrology and fundamental quantum mechanical studies.…
The advent of laser cooling techniques revolutionized the study of many atomic-scale systems. This has fueled progress towards quantum computers by preparing trapped ions in their motional ground state, and generating new states of matter…
Preparing and manipulating quantum states of mechanical resonators is a highly interdisciplinary undertaking that now receives enormous interest for its far-reaching potential in fundamental and applied science. Up to now, only nanoscale…
Quantum fluctuations of the electromagnetic vacuum impose an observable quantum limit to the lowest temperatures that can be reached with conventional laser cooling techniques. As laser cooling experiments continue to bring massive…
Cooling a mesoscopic mechanical oscillator to its quantum ground state is elementary for the preparation and control of low entropy quantum states of large scale objects. Here, we pre-cool a 70-MHz micromechanical silica oscillator to an…
We describe a cryogenic cavity-optomechanical system that combines Si3N4 membranes with a mechanically-rigid Fabry-Perot cavity. The extremely high quality-factor frequency products of the membranes allow us to cool a MHz mechanical mode to…
The observation of quantum phenomena in macroscopic mechanical oscillators has been a subject of interest since the inception of quantum mechanics. Prerequisite to this regime are both preparation of the mechanical oscillator at low phonon…
Optomechanics is a prime example of light matter interaction, where photons directly couple to phonons, allowing to precisely control and measure the state of a mechanical object. This makes it a very appealing platform for testing…
Preparing mechanical systems in their lowest possible entropy state, the quantum ground state, starting from a room temperature environment is a key challenge in quantum optomechanics. This would not only enable creating quantum states of…
The motional sideband asymmetry of a mechanical oscillator interacting with a laser field can be observed when approaching the quantum ground state, where the zero-point energy of the mechanical oscillator becomes a sizable contribution to…