844 research outputs found
Quantum limits of cold damping with optomechanical coupling
Thermal noise of a mirror can be reduced by cold damping. The displacement is
measured with a high-finesse cavity and controlled with the radiation pressure
of a modulated light beam. We establish the general quantum limits of noise in
cold damping mechanisms and we show that the optomechanical system allows to
reach these limits. Displacement noise can be arbitrarily reduced in a narrow
frequency band. In a wide-band analysis we show that thermal fluctuations are
reduced as with classical damping whereas quantum zero-point fluctuations are
left unchanged. The only limit of cold damping is then due to zero-point energy
of the mirrorComment: 10 pages, 3 figures, RevTe
High-sensitivity optical monitoring of a micro-mechanical resonator with a quantum-limited optomechanical sensor
We experimentally demonstrate the high-sensitivity optical monitoring of a
micro-mechanical resonator and its cooling by active control. Coating a
low-loss mirror upon the resonator, we have built an optomechanical sensor
based on a very high-finesse cavity (30000). We have measured the thermal noise
of the resonator with a quantum-limited sensitivity at the 10^-19 m/rootHz
level, and cooled the resonator down to 5K by a cold-damping technique.
Applications of our setup range from quantum optics experiments to the
experimental demonstration of the quantum ground state of a macroscopic
mechanical resonator.Comment: 4 pages, 5 figure
Mechanical loss in state-of-the-art amorphous optical coatings
We present the results of mechanical characterizations of many different
high-quality optical coatings made of ion-beam-sputtered titania-doped tantala
and silica, developed originally for interferometric gravitational-wave
detectors. Our data show that in multi-layer stacks (like high-reflection Bragg
mirrors, for example) the measured coating dissipation is systematically higher
than the expectation and is correlated with the stress condition in the sample.
This has a particular relevance for the noise budget of current advanced
gravitational-wave interferometers, and, more generally, for any experiment
involving thermal-noise limited optical cavities.Comment: 31 pages, 14 figure
A micropillar for cavity optomechanics
We present a new micromechanical resonator designed for cavity optomechanics.
We have used a micropillar geometry to obtain a high-frequency mechanical
resonance with a low effective mass and a very high quality factor. We have
coated a 60-m diameter low-loss dielectric mirror on top of the pillar and
are planning to use this micromirror as part of a high-finesse Fabry-Perot
cavity, to laser cool the resonator down to its quantum ground state and to
monitor its quantum position fluctuations by quantum-limited optical
interferometry
Material loss angles from direct measurements of broadband thermal noise
International audienceWe estimate the loss angles of the materials currently used in the highly reflective test-mass coatings of interferometric detectors of gravitational waves, namely Silica, Tantala, and Ti-doped Tantala, from direct measurement of coating thermal noise in an optical interferometer testbench, the Caltech TNI. We also present a simple predictive theory for the material properties of amorphous glassy oxide mixtures, which gives results in good agreement with our measurements on Ti-doped Tantala. Alternative measurement methods and results are reviewed, and some critical issues are discussed
Correlated evolution of structure and mechanical loss of a sputtered silica film
Energy dissipation in amorphous coatings severely affects high-precision
optical and quantum transducers. In order to isolate the source of coating
loss, we performed an extensive study of Raman scattering and mechanical loss
of a thermally-treated sputtered silica coating. Our results show that loss is
correlated with the population of three-membered rings of Si-O tetrahedral
units, and support the evidence that thermal treatment reduces the density of
metastable states separated by a characteristic energy of about 0.5 eV, in
favour of an increase of the states separated by smaller activation energies.
Finally, we conclude that three-fold rings are involved in the relaxation
mechanisms only if they belong to more complex chain-like structures of 10 to
100 tetrahedra.Comment: 5 pages, 3 figure
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