Claudiu Genes

Ground-state cooling of a micromechanical oscillator: Comparing cold damping and cavity-assisted cooling schemes

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.

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.

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 can not 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.

Simultaneous cooling and entanglement of mechanical modes of a micromirror in an optical cavity

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.

Self-cooling of a movable mirror to the ground state using radiation pressure

We show that one can cool a micro-mechanical oscillator to its quantum ground state using radiation pressure in an appropriately detuned cavity (self-cooling). From a simple 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. We also present dynamical calculations which show how to access the mirror final temperature from the fluctuations of the field reflected by the cavity.

Entanglement in macroscopic optomechanical systems

We consider an optical cavity made by two moving mirrors and driven by an intense classical laser field. We determine the steady state of he optomechanical system and show that two vibrational modes of the mirrors, with effective mass of the order of micrograms, can be entangled thanks to the effect of radiation pressure. The resulting entanglement is however quite fragile with respect to temperature.