Related papers: Active laser cooling of a centimeter-scale torsion…
Probing the possibility of entanglement generation through gravity offers a path to tackle the question of whether gravitational fields possess a quantum mechanical nature. A potential realization necessitates systems with low-frequency…
The optical lever is a precision displacement sensor with broad applications. In principle, it can track the motion of a mechanical oscillator with added noise at the Standard Quantum Limit (SQL); however, demonstrating this performance…
Mechanical transduction of torque has been key to probing a number of physical phenomena, such as gravity, the angular momentum of light, the Casimir effect, magnetism, and quantum oscillations. Following similar trends as mass and force…
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…
Precise measurements of the displacement of, and force acting on, a mechanical oscillator can be performed by coupling the oscillator to an optical cavity. Brownian thermal forces represent a fundamental limit to measurement sensitivity…
Conventional techniques for laser cooling, by coherent scattering off of internal states or through an optical cavity mode, have so far proved inefficient on mechanical oscillators heavier than a few nanograms. That is because larger…
Precision sensing and manipulation of milligram-scale mechanical oscillators has attracted growing interest in the fields of table-top explorations of gravity and tests of quantum mechanics at macroscopic scales. Torsional oscillators…
Measuring very small forces, particularly those of a gravitational nature, has always been of great interest, as fundamental tests of our understanding of the physical laws. Ultra-long period mechanical oscillators, typically used in such…
Tapered optical fibers (TOFs) are used in many areas of physics and optical technologies ranging from coupling light into nanophotonic components to optical sensing and amplification to interfacing quantum emitters. Here, we study the…
Thermal noise is a major obstacle to observing quantum behavior in macroscopic systems. To mitigate its effect, quantum optomechanical experiments are typically performed in a cryogenic environment. However, this condition represents a…
Generating non-classical states of light by opto-mechanical coupling depends critically on the mechanical and optical properties of micro-oscillators and on the minimization of thermal noise. We present an oscillating micro-mirror with a…
Planar, double-torsional oscillators are especially suitable for short-range macroscopic force search experiments, since they can be operated at the limit of instrumental thermal noise. As a study of this limit, we report a measurement of…
Many protocols in quantum science and technology require initializing a system in a pure quantum state. In the context of the motional state of massive resonators, this enables studying fundamental physics at the elusive quantum-classical…
Gravitational forces that oscillate at audio-band frequencies are measured with masses suspended as pendulums that have resonance frequencies even lower. If the pendulum is excited by thermal energy or by seismic motion of the environment,…
Optical measurement of the motion of a 940 kHz mechanical resonance of a silicon nitride nanostring resonator is demonstrated with a read out noise imprecision reaching 37 dB below that of the resonator's zero-point fluctuations. Via…
This paper demonstrates cooling of the center-of-mass motion of 10 $\mu$m-diameter optically levitated silica spheres to an effective temperature of $50\pm22 \mu$K, achieved by minimizing the technical pointing noise of the trapping laser.…
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 analyze the lowest achievable temperature for a mechanical oscillator (representing, for example, the motion of a single trapped ion) which is coupled with a driven quantum refrigerator. The refrigerator is composed of a parametrically…
Laser cooling is a fundamental technique used in primary atomic frequency standards, quantum computers, quantum condensed matter physics and tests of fundamental physics, among other areas. It has been known since the early 1990s that laser…
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…