Laser cooling of a mechanical mode of a resonator by the radiation pressure of a detuned optical cavity mode has been recently demonstrated by various groups in different experimental configurations. Here, we consider the effect of a second mechanical mode with a close but different resonance frequency. We show that the nearby mechanical resonance is simultaneously cooled by the cavity field, provided that the difference between the two mechanical frequencies is not too small. When this frequency difference becomes smaller than the effective mechanical damping of the secondary mode, the two cooling processes interfere destructively similarly to what happens in electromagnetically induced transparency, and cavity cooling is suppressed in the limit of identical mechanical frequencies. We show that also the entanglement properties of the steady state of the tripartite system crucially depend upon the difference between the two mechanical frequencies. If the latter is larger than the effective damping of the second mechanical mode, the state shows fully tripartite entanglement and each mechanical mode is entangled with the cavity mode. If instead, the frequency difference is smaller, the steady state is a two-mode biseparable state, inseparable only when one splits the cavity mode from the two mechanical modes. In this latter case, the entanglement of each mechanical mode with the cavity mode is extremely fragile with respect to temperature.
Robust entanglement of a micromechanical resonator with output optical fields
We perform an analysis of the optomechanical entanglement between the experimentally detectable output field of an optical cavity and a vibrating cavity end-mirror. We show that by a proper choice of the readout (mainly by a proper choice of detection bandwidth) one cannot only detect the already predicted intracavity entanglement but also optimize and increase it. This entanglement is explained as being generated by a scattering process owing to which strong quantum correlations between the mirror and the optical Stokes sideband are created. All-optical entanglement between scattered sidebands is also predicted, and it is shown that the mechanical resonator and the two sideband modes form a fully tripartite-entangled system capable of providing practicable and robust solutions for continuous-variable quantum-communication protocols.
Emergence of atom-light-mirror entanglement inside an optical cavity
We propose a scheme for the realization of a hybrid, strongly quantum-correlated system formed of an atomic ensemble surrounded by a high-finesse optical cavity with a vibrating mirror. We show that the steady state of the system shows tripartite and bipartite continuous variable entanglement in experimentally accessible parameter regimes, which is robust against temperature.
Ground-state cooling of a micromechanical oscillator: Comparing cold damping and cavity-assisted cooling schemes
C. Genes,
D. Vitali,
P. Tombesi,
S. Gigan,
M. Aspelmeyer
We provide a general framework to describe cooling of a micromechanical oscillator to its quantum ground state by means of radiation-pressure coupling with a driven optical cavity. We apply it to two experimentally realized schemes, back-action cooling via a detuned cavity and cold-damping quantum-feedback cooling, and we determine the ultimate quantum limits of both schemes for the full parameter range of a stable cavity. While both allow one to reach the oscillator's quantum ground state, we find that back-action cooling is more efficient in the good cavity limit, i.e., when the cavity bandwidth is smaller than the mechanical frequency, while cold damping is more suitable for the bad cavity limit. The results of previous treatments are recovered as limiting cases of specific parameter regimes.
Self-cooling of a movable mirror to the ground state using radiation pressure
We show that one can cool a micromechanical oscillator to its quantum ground state using radiation pressure in an appropriately detuned cavity (self-cooling). From a theory based on Heisenberg-Langevin equations we find that optimal self-cooling occurs in the good cavity regime, when the cavity bandwidth is smaller than the mechanical frequency, but still larger than the effective mechanical damping. In this case the intracavity field and the vibrational mechanical mode coherently exchange their fluctuations, thus reducing the mirror temperature by several orders of magnitude. We also present dynamical calculations which show how to access the mirror temperature from a homodyne measurement of the fluctuations of the reflected field.
