Self-cooling of a micro-mirror by radiation pressure

We demonstrate the feasibility of levitating a small mirror using only radiation pressure. In our scheme, the mirror is supported by a tripod where each leg of the tripod is a Fabry-Perot cavity. The macroscopic state of the mirror is coherently coupled to the supporting cavity modes allowing coherent interrogation and manipulation of the mirror motion. The proposed scheme is an extreme example of the optical spring, where a mechanical oscillator is isolated from the environm...

We show how stationary entanglement between an optical cavity field mode and a macroscopic vibrating mirror can be generated by means of radiation pressure. We also show how the generated optomechanical entanglement can be quantified and we suggest an experimental readout-scheme to fully characterize the entangled state. Surprisingly, such optomechanical entanglement is shown to persist for environment temperatures above 20K using state-of-the-art experimental parameters.

Optomechanical systems show tremendous promise for high sensitivity sensing of forces and modification of mechanical properties via light. For example, similar to neutral atoms and trapped ions, laser cooling of mechanical motion by radiation pressure can take single mechanical modes to their ground state. Conventional optomechanical cooling is able to introduce additional damping channel to mechanical motion, while keeping its thermal noise at the same level, and as a conseq...

We consider the dynamics of a vibrating and rotating end-mirror of an optical Fabry-P{\'erot} cavity that can sustain Laguerre-Gaussian modes. We demonstrate theoretically that since the intra-cavity field carries linear as well as angular momentum, radiation pressure can create bipartite entanglement between a vibrational and a rotational mode of the mirror. Further we show that the ratio of vibrational and rotational couplings with the radiation field can easily be adjusted...

Radiation pressure can be used to enable optomechanical control and manipulation of the quantum state of a mechanical oscillator. Optomechanical interaction can also be mediated by photothermal effects which, although frequently overlooked, may compete with radiation pressure interaction. Understanding of how these phenomena affect the coherent exchange of information between optical and mechanical degrees of freedom is often underdeveloped, particularly in mesoscale high-pow...

A cavity optomechanical system is initiated by a radiation pressure of a cavity field onto a mirror element acting as a quantum resonator. This radiation pressure can control the thermodynamic character of the mirror to some extent, such as cooling its effective temperature. Here we show that by properly engineering the spectral density of a thermal heat bath that interacts with a quantum system, the evolution of the quantum system can be effectively turned on and off. Inside...

Optical Fabry-Perot cavity with a movable mirror is a paradigmatic optomechanical systems. While usually the mirror is supported by a mechanical spring, it has been shown that it is possible to keep one of the mirrors in a stable equilibrium purely by optical levitation without any mechanical support. In this work we expand previous studies of nonlinear dynamics of such a system by demonstrating a possibility for mechanical parametric instability and emergence of the ``phonon...

The search for experimental demonstrations of the quantum behavior of macroscopic mechanical resonators is a fastly growing field of investigation and recent results suggest that the generation of quantum states of resonators with a mass at the microgram scale is within reach. In this chapter we give an overview of two important topics within this research field: cooling to the motional ground state, and the generation of entanglement involving mechanical, optical and atomic ...

We propose a technique aimed at cooling a harmonically oscillating mirror to its quantum mechanical ground state starting from room temperature. Our method, which involves the two-sided irradiation of the vibrating mirror inside an optical cavity, combines several advantages over the two-mirror arrangements being used currently. For comparable parameters the three-mirror configuration provides a stiffer trap for the oscillating mirror. Furthermore it prevents bistability from...

In this work we combine the large per-photon optical gradient force with the sensitive feedback of a high quality factor whispering-gallery microcavity. The cavity geometry, consisting of a pair of silica disks separated by a nanoscale gap, shows extremely strong dynamical backaction, powerful enough to excite giant coherent oscillations even under heavily damped conditions (mechanical Q=4). In vacuum, the threshold for regenerative mechanical oscillation is lowered to an opt...