Demonstration of an ultracold micro-optomechanical oscillator in a cryogenic cavity
- Author(s)
- Simon Gröblacher, Jared B. Hertzberg, Michael Vanner, Garrett Cole, Sylvain Gigan, Keith Schwab, Markus Aspelmeyer
- Abstract
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 science1, 2. Up to now, only nanoscale mechanical devices achieved operation close to the quantum regime3, 4. We report a new micro-optomechanical resonator that is laser cooled to a level of 30 thermal quanta. This is equivalent to the best nanomechanical devices, however, with a mass more than four orders of magnitude larger (43 ng versus 1 pg) and at more than two orders of magnitude higher environment temperature (5 K versus 30 mK). Despite the large laser-added cooling factor of 4,000 and the cryogenic environment, our cooling performance is not limited by residual absorption effects. These results pave the way for the preparation of 100-m scale objects in the quantum regime. Possible applications range from quantum-limited optomechanical sensing devices to macroscopic tests of quantum physics5, 6.
- Organisation(s)
- Quantum Optics, Quantum Nanophysics and Quantum Information
- External organisation(s)
- University of Maryland, College Park, École supérieure de physique et de chimie industrielles de la ville de Paris, Cornell University
- Journal
- Nature Physics
- Volume
- 5
- Pages
- 485-488
- No. of pages
- 4
- ISSN
- 1745-2473
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.1038/nphys1301
- Publication date
- 2009
- Peer reviewed
- Yes
- Austrian Fields of Science 2012
- 1030 Physics, Astronomy
- Portal url
- https://ucris.univie.ac.at/portal/en/publications/demonstration-of-an-ultracold-microoptomechanical-oscillator-in-a-cryogenic-cavity(08cb2238-9e9e-4202-b0c0-b86e2a9b1e07).html