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Under a strong quantum measurement, the motion of an oscillator is disturbed by the measurement back-action, as required by the Heisenberg uncertainty principle. When a mechanical oscillator is continuously monitored via an electromagnetic…
Torque sensors such as the torsion balance enabled the first determination of the gravitational constant by Cavendish and the discovery of Coulomb's law. Torque sensors are also widely used in studying small-scale magnetism, the Casimir…
Accumulation of electrical charge on the end mirrors of gravitational wave observatories, such as the space-based LISA mission and ground-based LIGO detectors, can become a source of noise limiting the sensitivity of such detectors through…
The radiation pressure coupling between a low-mass moving mirror and an incident light field has been experimentally studied in a high-finesse Fabry-Perot cavity. Using classical intensity noise in order to mimic radiation pressure quantum…
Probing quantum entanglement with macroscopic objects allows us to test quantum mechanics in new regimes. One way to realize such behavior is to couple a macroscopic mechanical oscillator to a continuous light field via radiation pressure.…
We have developed a scheme to measure the optical torque, exerted by a laser beam on a phase object, by measuring the orbital angular momentum of the transmitted beam. The experiment is a macroscopic simulation of a situation in optical…
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…
Levitated oscillators with millimeter or sub-millimeter size are particularly attractive due to their potential role in studying various fundamental problems and practical applications. One of the crucial issues towards these goals is to…
Exploring gravitational interactions between objects with small masses has become increasingly timely. Concurrently, oscillators with masses ranging between milligrams and grams in cavity optomechanical systems sparked interest for probing…
We observe the opto-mechanical multistability of a macroscopic torsion balance oscillator. The torsion oscillator forms the moving mirror of a hemi-spherical laser light cavity. When a laser beam is coupled into this cavity, the radiation…
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…
We propose a sensing scheme for detecting weak forces that achieves Heisenberg-limited sensitivity without relying on entanglement or other non-classical resources. Our scheme utilizes coherent averaging across a chain of N optomechanical…
Quantum measurements of mechanical systems can produce optical squeezing via ponderomotive forces. Its observation requires high environmental isolation and efficient detection, typically achieved by using optical cavities and cryogenic…
Optical tweezers are a powerful tool for the precise positioning of a variety of small objects, including single neutral atoms. Once trapped, atoms can be cooled to the motional ground state of the tweezers. For a more advanced control of…
The topic of this thesis is the theoretical analysis of the optomechanical coupling effects in a high-finesse optical cavity, and the experimental realization of such a device. Radiation pressure exerted by light limits the sensitivity of…
Detection of low frequency gravitational waves around 0.1 Hz is one of the important targets for future gravitational wave observation. One of the main sources of the expected signals is gravi- tational waves from binary intermediate-mass…
An open question in experimental physics is the characterization of gravitational effects in quantum regimes. We propose an experimental set-up that uses well-tested techniques in cavity optomechanics to observe the effects of the…
The coupling of laser light to a mechanical oscillator via radiation pressure leads to the emergence of quantum mechanical correlations between the amplitude and phase quadrature of the laser beam. These correlations form a generic…
We present the development of a high $Q$ monolithic silica pendulum weighing 7 mg. The measured $Q$ value for the pendulum mode at 2.2 Hz was $2.0\times10^6$. To the best of our knowledge this is the lowest dissipative mg-scale mechanical…
We propose a method to entangle two distant vibrating microsize mirrors (i.e., mechanical oscillators) in a cavity optomechanical system. In this scheme, we discuss both the resonant and large-detuning conditions, and show that the…