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arXiv:1104.4623 · Physical Review Letters

Optomechanical Cavity Cooling of an Atomic Ensemble

Monika Schleier-Smith, Ian D. Leroux, Hao Zhang, Mackenzie A. Van Camp, Vladan Vuletić

Published Sep 28, 2011• 105 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

We demonstrate cavity sideband cooling of a single collective motional mode of an atomic ensemble down to a mean phonon occupation number ⟨n⟩(min⁡)=2.0(-0.3)(+0.9). Both ⟨n⟩(min) and the observed cooling rate are in good agreement with an optomechanical model. The cooling rate constant is proportional to the total photon scattering rate by the ensemble, demonstrating the cooperative character of the light-emission-induced cooling process. We deduce fundamental limits to cavity cooling either the collective mode or, sympathetically, the single-atom degrees of freedom.

DOI
10.1103/physrevlett.107.143005

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We demonstrate cavity cooling of all motional degrees of freedom of an atomic ensemble using light that is far detuned from the atomic transitions by several gigahertz. The cooling is achieved by cavity-induced frequency-dependent asymmetric enhancement of the atomic emission spectrum, thereby extracting thermal kinetic energy from the atomic system. Within 100 ms, the atomic temperature is reduced from 200 to 10 μK, where the final temperature is mainly limited by the linewidth of the cavity. In principle, the technique can be applied to molecules and atoms with complex internal energy structure.
We propose a ground state cooling scheme for an optomechanical resonator based on the system of one Λ-type three-level atom trapped in an optomechanical cavity. This cooling scheme works in a single-photon coupling, and strong atom-cavity coupling regimes. By investigating the cooling dynamics, we find that there is an EIT-like quantum coherent effect in this system which can suppress the undesired transitions for heating. Moreover, our study shows that the final average phonon number of the optomechanical resonator can be smaller than the one based on the sideband cooling. Furthermore, the ground state cooling of the resonator can still be achieved after thermal fluctuations included. In addition, in comparison with previous cooling methods, there are fewer limitations on the decay rates of both the cavity and the atom in this scheme. As a result, this scheme is very suitable to realize the ground cooling of an optomechanical resonator in the experiment.
A major trend within the field of cavity QED is to boost the interaction strength between the cavity field and the atomic internal degrees of freedom of the trapped atom by decreasing the mode volume of the cavity. In such systems, it is natural to achieve strong atom-cavity coupling, where the coherent interaction strength exceeds the cavity linewidth, while the linewidth exceeds the atomic trap frequency. While most work focuses on coupling of photons to the internal degrees of freedom, additional rich dynamics can occur by considering the atomic motional degree of freedom as well. In particular, we show that such a system is a natural candidate to explore an interesting regime of quantum optomechanics, where the zero-point atomic motion yields a cavity frequency shift larger than its linewidth (so-called single-photon optomechanical strong coupling), but simultaneously where the motional frequency cannot be resolved by the cavity. We show that this regime can result in a number of remarkable phenomena, such as strong entanglement between the atomic wave function and the scattering properties of single incident photons, or an anomalous mechanism where the atomic motion can significantly heat up due to single-photon scattering, even if the atom is trapped tightly within the Lamb-Dicke limit.
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We show that an ensemble of two-level atoms commonly coupled to a single, driven, damped high-QQQ cavity mode could be cooled and trapped via the correlated dynamics of cavity field and the atomic motion. For sufficiently large detuning between the atoms and the field, spontaneous emission plays no role in the dynamics, and the cooling scheme can be applied to all particles with a sufficient optical dipole moment. The time scale of this collective cooling process increases with the particle number and can be optimized by suitably tailoring the pump field amplitude and frequency. The key properties of the underlying mechanism are discussed using a linearized model, where one can derive a closed set of equations for certain ensemble averages and the field. The results are then compared with N-particle dynamical simulations of the full equations.
We analyze the dynamics leading to radiative cooling of an atomic ensemble confined inside an optical cavity when the atomic dipolar transitions are incoherently pumped and can synchronize. Our study is performed in the semiclassical regime and assumes that cavity decay is the largest rate in the system dynamics. We identify three regimes characterizing the cooling. At first hot atoms are individually cooled by the cavity friction forces. After this stage, the atoms' center-of-mass motion is further cooled by the coupling to the internal degrees of freedom while the dipoles synchronize. In the latest stage dipole-dipole correlations are stationary and the center-of-mass motion is determined by the interplay between friction and dispersive forces due to the coupling with the collective dipole. We analyze this asymptotic regime by means of a mean-field model and show that the width of the momentum distribution can be of the order of the photon recoil. Furthermore, the internal excitations oscillate spatially with the cavity standing wave forming an antiferromagnetic-like order.