Radiation-pressure self-cooling of a micromirror in a cryogenic environment

Author(s)
Simon Gröblacher, Sylvain Gigan, Hannes Böhm, Anton Zeilinger, Markus Aspelmeyer
Abstract

We demonstrate radiation-pressure cavity-cooling of a mechanical mode of a micromirror starting from cryogenic temperatures. To achieve that, a high-finesse Fabry-Pérot cavity (F≈2200) was actively stabilized inside a continuous-flow 4He cryostat. We observed optical cooling of the fundamental mode of a 50 μm×50 μm×5.4 μm singly clamped micromirror at ωm=3.5 MHz from 35 K to approximately 290 mK. This corresponds to a thermal occupation factor of langnrang≈1×104. The cooling performance is only limited by the mechanical quality and by the optical finesse of the system. Heating effects, e.g. due to absorption of photons in the micromirror, could not be observed. These results represent a next step towards cavity-cooling a mechanical oscillator into its quantum ground state.

Organisation(s)
Quantum Optics, Quantum Nanophysics and Quantum Information
Journal
Europhysics Letters
Volume
81
No. of pages
5
ISSN
0295-5075
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1209/0295-5075/81/54003
Publication date
2008
Peer reviewed
Yes
Austrian Fields of Science 2012
103026 Quantum optics
Portal url
https://ucrisportal.univie.ac.at/en/publications/radiationpressure-selfcooling-of-a-micromirror-in-a-cryogenic-environment(0a3ed75c-0a30-4e44-a170-1982a4e91a4d).html