Proceedings of SPIE, the International Society for Optical Engineering/Proceedings of SPIE

Quantum optomechanical correlations induced by radiation pressure between light and mirrors

Tristan Briant, P. Verlot, Alexandros Tavernarakis, P.-F. Cohadon, A. Heidmann

Published Dec 29, 2008• 2 citations

Abstract

Radiation pressure exerted by light in interferometric measurements is responsible for displacements of mirrors which appear as an additional back-action noise and limit the sensitivity of the measurement. We experimentally study these effects by monitoring in a very high-finesse optical cavity the displacements of a mirror with a sensitivity at the 10-20m/√Hz level. This unique sensitivity is a step towards the first observation of the fundamental quantum effects of radiation pressure and the resulting standard quantum limit in interferometric measurements. Our experiment may become a powerful facility to test quantum noise reduction schemes, and we already have demonstrated radiation-pressure induced correlations between two optical beams sent into the same moving mirror cavity. Our scheme can be extended down to the quantum level and has applications both in high-sensitivity measurements and in quantum optics.

DOI: 10.1117/12.816413

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