Related papers: Motional sideband asymmetry of a solid-state mecha…

We present optical sideband spectroscopy measurements of a mesoscopic mechanical oscillator cooled near its quantum ground state. The mechanical oscillator, corresponding to a 3.99GHz acoustic mode of a patterned silicon nanobeam, is…

We describe measurements of the motional sidebands produced by a mechanical oscillator (with effective mass 43 ng and resonant frequency 705 kHz) that is placed in an optical cavity and cooled close to its quantum ground state. The red and…

The ground state cooling of a mechanical oscillator in an optomechanical cavity containing an ensemble of identical two-level ground-state atoms is studied in the highly unresolved-sideband regime. The system exhibits…

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 a massive mechanical resonator in a state with quantum limited motional energy provides a promising platform for studying fundamental physics with macroscopic systems and allows to realize a variety of applications, including…

Micro- and nanoscale opto-mechanical systems provide radiation pressure coupling of optical and mechanical degree of freedom and are actively pursued for their ability to explore quantum mechanical phenomena of macroscopic objects. Many of…

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…

Optomechanical thermometry is a precise and reference-free method to measure absolute temperature. While pumping high optical power is needed to overcome noise and reduce the integration time, there is actually an upper limit to the useful…

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…

We experimentally investigate a mechanical squeezed state realized in a parametrically-modulated membrane resonator embedded in an optical cavity. We demonstrate that a quantum characteristic of the squeezed dynamics can be revealed and…

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 consider a system where an optical cavity mode is parametrically coupled to a mechanical oscillator. A laser beam driving the cavity at its resonance frequency will acquire red- and blue-shifted sidebands due to noise in the position of…

The ability to prepare a macroscopic mechanical resonator into a quantum superposition state is an outstanding goal of cavity optomechanics. Here, we propose a technique to generate cat states of motion using the intrinsic nonlinearity of a…

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…

Optical measurements of a nanoscale silicon optomechanical crystal cavity with a mechanical resonance frequency of 3.6GHz are performed at sub-kelvin temperatures. We infer optical-absorption-induced heating and damping of the mechanical…

Precision measurement of non-linear observables is an important goal in all facets of quantum optics. This allows measurement-based non-classical state preparation, which has been applied to great success in various physical systems, and…

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…

Optomechanical coupling between the motion of a mechanical oscillator and a cavity represents a new arena for experimental investigation of quantum effects on the mesoscopic and macroscopic scale.The motional sidebands of the output of a…

Although they have enabled several advances in the field of optomechanics, optomechanical disk resonators have not yet been operated in the quantum regime. We present the first experimental demonstration of an optomechanical disk resonator…