Special CPM Seminar

Quantum effects in optomechanical systems

Pierre-François Cohadon

Laboratoire Kastler Brossel
École Normale Supérieure

Optomechanics, the coupling of optical and mechanical degrees of freedom, was until 10 years ago merely seen as a mechanical displacement measurement technique, used for its unprecedented sensitivity from AFM cantilevers to large-scale gravitational-wave detectors. From that point of view, the radiation-pressure back-action of the meter beam onto the mechanical resonator simply was a measurement noise, leading to quantum limits on the position measurement sensitivity.

Yet, that same back-action process allows to manipulate the mechanical state of motion, and such techniques have recently allowed to cool micromechanical resonators into their quantum ground state.

I will review the recent progress in the field, and our current effort to demonstrate such effects in a mm-scale high-Q mechanical resonator.