Abstract
Recent theoretical work has shown that radiation pressure effects can in principle cool a mechanical degree of freedom to its ground state. In this paper, we apply this theory to our realization of an optomechanical system in which the motion of mechanical oscillator modulates the resonance frequency of a superconducting microwave circuit. We present experimental data demonstrating the large mechanical quality factors possible with metallic, nanomechanical beams at 20 mK. Further measurements also show damping and cooling effects on the mechanical oscillator due to the microwave radiation field. These data motivate the prospects for employing this dynamical backaction technique to cool a mechanical mode entirely to its quantum ground state.
Highlights
Despite the recent progress in the fabrication, control and measurement of macroscopic mechanical objects, a mechanical oscillator is yet to be observed in its motional ground state
Standard dilution refrigeration techniques can cool sufficiently high frequency mechanical resonators to their ground state; these small, stiff oscillators are exceedingly difficult to measure with enough sensitivity to resolve the zero point motion
A force is applied to the oscillator that is proportional to its velocity using the information acquired from a precise measurement of the mechanical motion
Summary
Despite the recent progress in the fabrication, control and measurement of macroscopic mechanical objects, a mechanical oscillator is yet to be observed in its motional ground state. There have been proposals to couple mechanical motion to superconducting quantum interference devices (SQUIDs) [7, 8] In contrast to these mesoscopic methods, the most precise measurements in terms of absolute displacement sensitivity use interferometric techniques with visible light to infer the mechanical position [2]. This strong interaction between an electromagnetic resonance and mechanical motion offers another method for cooling. This paper explores these possibilities for cooling in our particular realization of this system, whereby a nanomechanical beam is embedded in a superconducting, microwave cavity [16]
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