Ground-state cooling of a micromechanical oscillator: Comparing cold damping and cavity-assisted cooling schemes

Author(s)
C. Genes, David Vitali, P Tombesi, Sylvain Gigan, Markus Aspelmeyer
Abstract

We provide a general framework to describe cooling of a micromechanical oscillator to its quantum ground state by means of radiation-pressure coupling with a driven optical cavity. We apply it to two experimentally realized schemes, back-action cooling via a detuned cavity and cold-damping quantum-feedback cooling, and we determine the ultimate quantum limits of both schemes for the full parameter range of a stable cavity. While both allow one to reach the oscillator’s quantum ground state, we find that back-action cooling is more efficient in the good cavity limit, i.e., when the cavity bandwidth is smaller than the mechanical frequency, while cold damping is more suitable for the bad cavity limit. The results of previous treatments are recovered as limiting cases of specific parameter regimes.

Organisation(s)
External organisation(s)
Università degli Studi di Camerino, Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften (ÖAW)
Journal
Physical Review A
Volume
77
No. of pages
9
ISSN
1050-2947
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevA.77.033804
Publication date
2008
Peer reviewed
Yes
Austrian Fields of Science 2012
103026 Quantum optics, 103025 Quantum mechanics
Portal url
https://ucrisportal.univie.ac.at/en/publications/e4d1e1f5-bff3-435a-922d-875170c07614