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Self-cooling of a micromirror by radiation pressure

Nature volume 444, pages 67–70 (2006)Cite this article

Abstract

Cooling of mechanical resonators is currently a popular topic in many fields of physics including ultra-high precision measurements1, detection of gravitational waves2,3 and the study of the transition between classical and quantum behaviour of a mechanical system4,5,6. Here we report the observation of self-cooling of a micromirror by radiation pressure inside a high-finesse optical cavity. In essence, changes in intensity in a detuned cavity, as caused by the thermal vibration of the mirror, provide the mechanism for entropy flow from the mirror’s oscillatory motion to the low-entropy cavity field2. The crucial coupling between radiation and mechanical motion was made possible by producing free-standing micromirrors of low mass (m ≈ 400 ng), high reflectance (more than 99.6%) and high mechanical quality (Q ≈ 10,000). We observe cooling of the mechanical oscillator by a factor of more than 30; that is, from room temperature to below 10 K. In addition to purely photothermal effects7 we identify radiation pressure as a relevant mechanism responsible for the cooling. In contrast with earlier experiments, our technique does not need any active feedback8,9,10. We expect that improvements of our method will permit cooling ratios beyond 1,000 and will thus possibly enable cooling all the way down to the quantum mechanical ground state of the micromirror.

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Figure 1: Sketch of the experimental setup.
Figure 2: Power spectrum of the mechanical mode at two different relative detuning levels Δ of the cavity for an input power of 2 mW.
Figure 4: Self-cooling of the mechanical resonator.
Figure 3: Radiation-pressure-induced damping of mirror dynamics.

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Acknowledgements

We thank C. Brukner, S. Gröblacher, J. Kofler, T. Jennewein, M. S. Kim, A. Vandaley and D. Vitali for discussion. We acknowledge financial support by the Austrian Science Fund (FWF), by the City of Vienna, by the Austrian NANO Initiative (MNA) and by the Foundational Questions Institute (FQXi).

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Author notes

  1. M. Paternostro

    Present address: School of Mathematics and Physics, Queen’s University Belfast, Belfast, BT7 1NN, UK

  2. K. C. Schwab

    Present address: Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, 14853, USA

  3. D. Bäuerle

    Present address: University of California, Berkeley, California, 94720-1740, USA

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Physics Faculty, Institute for Experimental Physics, University of Vienna, Boltzmanngasse 5, A-1090, Vienna, Austria

    S. Gigan, H. R. Böhm, M. Aspelmeyer & A. Zeilinger

  2. Institute for Quantum Optics and Quantum Information (IQOQI), Austrian Academy of Sciences, Boltzmanngasse 3, A-1090, Vienna, Austria

    S. Gigan, H. R. Böhm, M. Paternostro, F. Blaser, M. Aspelmeyer & A. Zeilinger

  3. Institute for Applied Physics, Johannes-Kepler-University Linz, Altenbergerstrasse 69, A-4040, Linz, Austria

    G. Langer & D. Bäuerle

  4. Laboratory for Physical Sciences, University of Maryland, Maryland, 20740, College Park, USA

    J. B. Hertzberg & K. C. Schwab

  5. Department of Physics, University of Maryland, Maryland, 20740, College Park, USA

    J. B. Hertzberg

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Correspondence to M. Aspelmeyer.

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Supplementary information

Supplementary Notes

This file contains a detailed characterization of the micro-mechanical oscillator and of the optical cavity, together with a description of the methods used. (PDF 443 kb)

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Gigan, S., Böhm, H., Paternostro, M. et al. Self-cooling of a micromirror by radiation pressure. Nature 444, 67–70 (2006). https://doi.org/10.1038/nature05273

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