Back-action ground-state cooling of a micromechanical membrane via intensity-dependent interaction

Abstract

We propose a theoretical scheme to show the possibility of achieving the quantum ground-state cooling of a vibrating micromechanical membrane inside a high-finesse optical cavity by a back-action cooling approach. The scheme is based on an intensity-dependent coupling of the membrane to the intracavity radiation pressure field. We find the exact expression for the position and momentum variances of the membrane by solving the linearized quantum Langevin equations in the steady state, conditioned by the Routh-Hurwitz criterion. We show that, by varying the Lamb-Dicke parameter and the membrane's reflectivity, one can effectively control the mean number of excitations of vibration of the membrane and can cool down the system to micro-Kelvin temperatures. © 2011 American Physical Society.