Abstract
The ability to cool single ions, atomic ensembles, and more recently macroscopic degrees of freedom down to the quantum ground state has generated considerable progress and perspectives in fundamental and technological science. These major advances have been essentially obtained by coupling mechanical motion to a resonant electromagnetic degree of freedom in what is generally known as laser cooling. Here, we experimentally demonstrate the first self-induced coherent cooling mechanism that is not mediated by an electromagnetic resonance. Using a focused electron beam, we report a 50-fold reduction of the motional temperature of a nanowire. Our result primarily relies on the sub-nanometre confinement of the electron beam and generalizes to any delayed and spatially confined interaction, with important consequences for near-field microscopy and fundamental nanoscale dissipation mechanisms.
Highlights
The ability to cool single ions, atomic ensembles, and more recently macroscopic degrees of freedom down to the quantum ground state has generated considerable progress and perspectives in fundamental and technological science
We report the first dynamical backaction cooling experiment that is not mediated by an electromagnetic resonance
We demonstrate that under the illumination of a continuous focused electron beam, a nanowire can spontaneously reach an equilibrium with drastically reduced motional temperature
Summary
The ability to cool single ions, atomic ensembles, and more recently macroscopic degrees of freedom down to the quantum ground state has generated considerable progress and perspectives in fundamental and technological science. These major advances have been essentially obtained by coupling mechanical motion to a resonant electromagnetic degree of freedom in what is generally known as laser cooling. In a more specific scope, our work shows that electron microscopy is perfectly suited to ultrasensitive, perturbation-free dynamical studies at the nanoscale, with performances comparable to laser sensing[33,34], with a 100 times higher confinement This represents a very attractive perspective for sensitive investigation of mono-dimensional structures dynamics such as carbon nanotubes[35] and graphene[36]. On a more technical side, our results show that electron microscopy intrinsically holds the ability to suppress the unavoidable thermal vibrations of nano-structures, yielding to a significant improvement of the image resolution
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