Strong Optomechanical Squeezing of Light

We create squeezed light by exploiting the quantum nature of the mechanical interaction between laser light and a membrane mechanical resonator embedded in an optical cavity. The radiation pressure shot noise (fluctuating optical force from quantum laser amplitude noise) induces resonator motion well above that of thermally driven motion. This motion imprints a phase shift on the laser light, hence correlating the amplitude and phase noise, a consequence of which is optical squeezing. We experimentally demonstrate strong and continuous optomechanical squeezing of 1.7 +/- 0.2 dB below the shot noise level. The peak level of squeezing measured near the mechanical resonance is well described by a model whose parameters are independently calibrated and that includes thermal motion of the membrane with no other classical noise sources.Comment: 12 pages, 8 figure

Tuning p-wave interactions in an ultracold Fermi gas of atoms

We have measured a p-wave Feshbach resonance in a single-component, ultracold Fermi gas of potassium atoms. We have used this resonance to enhance the normally suppressed p-wave collision cross-section to values larger than the background s-wave cross-section between potassium atoms in different spin-states. In addition to the modification of two-body elastic processes, the resonance dramatically enhances three-body inelastic collisional loss.Comment: 4 pages, 5 figure

Control of Material Damping in High-Q Membrane Microresonators

We study the mechanical quality factors of bilayer aluminum/silicon-nitride membranes. By coating ultrahigh-Q Si3N4 membranes with a more lossy metal, we can precisely measure the effect of material loss on Q's of tensioned resonator modes over a large range of frequencies. We develop a theoretical model that interprets our results and predicts the damping can be reduced significantly by patterning the metal film. Using such patterning, we fabricate Al-Si3N4 membranes with ultrahigh Q at room temperature. Our work elucidates the role of material loss in the Q of membrane resonators and informs the design of hybrid mechanical oscillators for optical-electrical-mechanical quantum interfaces

Cavity optomechanics with Si3N4 membranes at cryogenic temperatures

We describe a cryogenic cavity-optomechanical system that combines Si3N4 membranes with a mechanically-rigid Fabry-Perot cavity. The extremely high quality-factor frequency products of the membranes allow us to cool a MHz mechanical mode to a phonon occupation of less than 10, starting at a bath temperature of 5 kelvin. We show that even at cold temperatures thermally-occupied mechanical modes of the cavity elements can be a limitation, and we discuss methods to reduce these effects sufficiently to achieve ground state cooling. This promising new platform should have versatile uses for hybrid devices and searches for radiation pressure shot noise.Comment: 19 pages, 5 figures, submitted to New Journal of Physic

Dilute Fermi gas: kinetic and interaction energies

A dilute homogeneous 3D Fermi gas in the ground state is considered for the case of a repulsive pairwise interaction. The low-density (dilution) expansions for the kinetic and interaction energies of the system in question are calculated up to the third order in the dilution parameter. Similar to the recent results for a Bose gas, the calculated quantities turn out to depend on a pairwise interaction through the two characteristic lengths: the former, $a$, is the well-known s-wave scattering length, and the latter, $b$, is related to $a$ by $b=a-m (\partial a/\partial m)$, where $m$ stands for the fermion mass. To take control of the results, calculations are fulfilled in two independent ways. The first involves the Hellmann-Feynman theorem, taken in conjunction with a helpful variational theorem for the scattering length. This way is used to derive the kinetic and interaction energies from the familiar low-density expansion of the total system energy first found by Huang and Yang. The second way operates with the in-medium pair wave functions. It allows one to derive the quantities of interest``from the scratch'', with no use of the total energy. An important result of the present investigation is that the pairwise interaction of fermions makes an essential contribution to their kinetic energy. Moreover, there is a complicated and interesting interplay of these quantities

Improving broadband displacement detection with quantum correlations

Interferometers enable ultrasensitive measurement in a wide array of applications from gravitational wave searches to force microscopes. The role of quantum mechanics in the metrological limits of interferometers has a rich history, and a large number of techniques to surpass conventional limits have been proposed. In a typical measurement configuration, the tradeoff between the probe's shot noise (imprecision) and its quantum backaction results in what is known as the standard quantum limit (SQL). In this work we investigate how quantum correlations accessed by modifying the readout of the interferometer can access physics beyond the SQL and improve displacement sensitivity. Specifically, we use an optical cavity to probe the motion of a silicon nitride membrane off mechanical resonance, as one would do in a broadband displacement or force measurement, and observe sensitivity better than the SQL dictates for our quantum efficiency. Our measurement illustrates the core idea behind a technique known as \textit{variational readout}, in which the optical readout quadrature is changed as a function of frequency to improve broadband displacement detection. And more generally our result is a salient example of how correlations can aid sensing in the presence of backaction.Comment: 17 pages, 5 figure

Gap solitons in superfluid boson-fermion mixtures

Using coupled equations for the bosonic and fermionic order parameters, we construct families of gap solitons (GSs) in a nearly one-dimensional Bose-Fermi mixture trapped in a periodic optical-lattice (OL) potential, the boson and fermion components being in the states of the BEC and BCS superfluid, respectively. Fundamental GSs are compact states trapped, essentially, in a single cell of the lattice. Full families of such solutions are constructed in the first two bandgaps of the OL-induced spectrum, by means of variational and numerical methods, which are found to be in good agreement. The families include both intra-gap and inter-gap solitons, with the chemical potentials of the boson and fermion components falling in the same or different bandgaps, respectively.Nonfundamental states, extended over several lattice cells, are constructed too. The GSs are stable against strong perturbations.Comment: 9 pages, 14 figure