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Communications in Theoretical Physics

Suppression of Stokes heating processes and improved optomechanical cooling with frequency modulation

Yang Bao, Qinghong Liao, Qingmin Zhao, Jing Wu

Published Feb 16, 2022• 2 citations
Publisher

Abstract

Abstract Ground-state cooling of mesoscopic mechanical objects is still a major challenge in the unresolved-sideband regime. We present a frequency modulation (FM) scheme to achieve cooling of the mechanical resonator to its ground-state in a double-cavity optomechanical system containing a mechanical resonator. The mean phonon number is determined by numerically solving a set of differential equations derived from the quantum master equations. Due to efficient suppression of Stokes heating processes in the presence of FM, the ground-state cooling, indicated by numerical calculations, is significantly achievable, regardless of whether in the resolved-sideband regime or the unresolved-sideband regime. Furthermore, by choosing parameters reasonably, the improvement of the quantum cooling limit is found to be capable of being positively correlated with the modulation frequency. This method provides new insight into quantum manipulation and creates more possibilities for applications of quantum devices.

DOI
10.1088/1572-9494/ac5588

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Abstract Ground-state cooling of mesoscopic mechanical objects is still a major challenge in the unresolved-sideband regime. We present a frequency modulation (FM) scheme to achieve cooling of the mechanical resonator to its ground-state in a double-cavity optomechanical system containing a mechanical resonator. The mean phonon number is determined by numerically solving a set of differential equations derived from the quantum master equations. Due to efficient suppression of Stokes heating processes in the presence of FM, the ground-state cooling, indicated by numerical calculations, is significantly achievable, regardless of whether in the resolved-sideband regime or the unresolved-sideband regime. Furthermore, by choosing parameters reasonably, the improvement of the quantum cooling limit is found to be capable of being positively correlated with the modulation frequency. This method provides new insight into quantum manipulation and creates more possibilities for applications of quantum devices.
Abstract The coupled mechanical resonators (MRs) are the prominent candidate for studying macroscopic quantum coherence. The prerequisite for observing macroscopic mechanical coherence is cooling the MRs to their ground state. Here, a theoretical scheme is proposed for improving the cooling of two coupled MRs by imposing frequency modulation (FM) upon the system to suppress the Stokes heating processes. By the methods of covariance analysis and numerical simulations, it is demonstrated that the cooling of double MRs can be realized in both stable and unstable regions with high efficiency compared to the cooling without FM, even if in unresolved sideband (USB) regime. By modulating the parameters appropriately, the cooling efficiencies of two MRs can be flexibly adjusted.
We propose an alternative experimentally feasible approach to achieve high-efficiency ground-state cooling of a mechanical oscillator in an optomechanical system under the deeply unresolved sideband condition with the assistance of both intracavity and extracavity squeezing. In the scheme, a degenerate optical parametric amplifier is placed inside the optical cavity, generating the intracavity squeezing; in addition, the optical cavity is driven by the extracavity squeezed light, namely the extracavity squeezing. The quantum interference effect generated by intracavity squeezing and extracavity squeezing can completely suppress the nonresonant Stokes heating process while greatly enhancing the anti-Stokes cooling process. Therefore, the joint-squeezing scheme is capable of cooling the mechanical oscillators to their quantum ground state in a regime far away from the resolved sideband condition. Compared with other traditional optomechanical cooling schemes, the single-photon cooling rate in this joint-squeezing scheme can be tremendously enlarged by nearly three orders of magnitude. At the same time, the coupling strength required to achieve ground-state cooling can be significantly reduced. This scheme is promising for cooling large-mass and low-frequency mechanical oscillators, which provides a prerequisite for preparing and manipulating nonclassical states in macroscopic quantum systems and lays a significant foundation for quantum manipulation.
Ground-state cooling of mechanical resonators is a prerequisite for the observation of various quantum effects in optomechanical systems and thus has always been a crucial task in quantum optomechanics. In this paper, we study how to realize ground-state cooling of the mechanical mode in a Fano-mirror optomechanical setup, which allows for enhanced effective optomechanical interaction but typically works in the (deeply) unresolved-sideband regime. We reveal that for such a two-sided cavity geometry with very different decay rates at the two cavity mirrors, it is possible to cool the mechanical mode down to its ground state within a broad range of parameters by using an appropriate single-sided coherent feedback. This is possible even if the total optical loss is more than seven orders of magnitude larger than the mechanical frequency and the feedback efficiency is relatively low. Importantly, we show that a more standard double-sided feedback scheme is not appropriate to cooperate with a Fano-mirror system.
Abstract We theoretically investigate a cooling scheme assisted by a quantum well (QW) and coherent feedback within a hybrid optomechanical system. Although the exciton mode in the QW and the mechanical resonator (MR) are initially uncoupled, their interaction via the microcavity field leads to an indirect exciton-mode–mechanical-mode coupling. The coherent feedback loop is applied by feeding back a fraction of the output field of the cavity through a controllable beam splitter to the cavity’s input mirror. It is shown that the cooling capability is enhanced by effectively suppressing the Stokes process through coupling with the QW. Furthermore, the effect of the anti-Stokes process is enhanced through the application of the coherent feedback loop. This particular system configuration enables cooling of the mechanical resonator even in the unresolved sideband regime (USR). This study has some important guiding significance in the field of quantum information processing.
Although they have enabled several advances in the field of optomechanics, optomechanical disk resonators have not yet been operated in the quantum regime. We present the first experimental demonstration of an optomechanical disk resonator prepared in the quantum ground state. With a gigahertz frequency, the mechanical breathing mode of the investigated semiconductor disk reaches a level of excitation below a single phonon when cooled in a dilution refrigerator. We quantify the phonon occupancy of the mechanical mode by performing Brillouin sideband spectroscopy: a conical optical fiber is evanescently coupled to the disk optical whispering-gallery mode, and Stokes and anti-Stokes photons scattered by phonon emission and absorption are counted on a single-photon detector. We measure a suppression of the absorption process corresponding to a phonon occupancy of 0.66±0.200.66\pm0.200.66±0.20. We experimentally investigate the mechanisms ruling laser-induced heating, which limits the lowest measurable phonon occupancy, and notably witness an extra-cavity heating effect.
Abstract We propose a ground state cooling scheme for an optomechanical resonator based on the system of a V-type three-level QD ensemble trapped in a two-mode cavity. The two-mode cavity was pumped by two different deriving fields. We studied the optomechanical cooling under the highly unresolved-sideband and beyond Lamb-Dicke regime (coupling strength between the cavity field and the phonon field not far less than the vibrational frequency). Our results show that the noise spectrum appeared a single peak when the detuning of the QD’s high excitation state and high-frequency driving field equals that of the QD’s low excitation state and low-frequency driving field, otherwise, then appeared double peaks. In the case of double peaks, we can realize the transition between optomechanical cooling and heating by changing the coupling strength of QD with cavity field, which is not available in the case of a single peak. We also studied the evolution of the mean phonon number with time, which is helpful to analyze ground state optomechanical cooling.