Ground-state cooling of an optomechanical resonator assisted by an atomic ensemble

Abstract

We investigate a ground-state cooling scheme for a mechanical resonator assisted by one two-level atomic ensemble. The atomic ensemble is confined in the optomechanical cavity and strongly couples to the cavity mode. Our scheme works in a strong excitation of the system. Thus, there are enough photons in the cavity to produce coupling between the mechanical and optical degrees of freedom. It is shown that our scheme can work well in the unresolved sideband regime and can accelerate the cooling process.