Millen J, Fonseca P Z G, Mavrogordatos T, Monteiro T S, Barker P F
Department of Physics and Astronomy, University College London, Gower Street, London WC1E 6BT, United Kingdom.
Phys Rev Lett. 2015 Mar 27;114(12):123602. doi: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.114.123602.
Optomechanical cavity cooling of levitated objects offers the possibility for laboratory investigation of the macroscopic quantum behavior of systems that are largely decoupled from their environment. However, experimental progress has been hindered by particle loss mechanisms, which have prevented levitation and cavity cooling in a vacuum. We overcome this problem with a new type of hybrid electro-optical trap formed from a Paul trap within a single-mode optical cavity. We demonstrate a factor of 100 cavity cooling of 400 nm diameter silica spheres trapped in vacuum. This paves the way for ground-state cooling in a smaller, higher finesse cavity, as we show that a novel feature of the hybrid trap is that the optomechanical cooling becomes actively driven by the Paul trap, even for singly charged nanospheres.
悬浮物体的光机械腔冷却为在很大程度上与其环境解耦的系统的宏观量子行为的实验室研究提供了可能性。然而，实验进展受到粒子损失机制的阻碍，这些机制阻止了在真空中的悬浮和腔冷却。我们用一种由单模光学腔内的保罗阱形成的新型混合电光阱克服了这个问题。我们展示了对被困在真空中的直径400纳米的二氧化硅球体进行100倍的腔冷却。这为在更小、更高精细度的腔中进行基态冷却铺平了道路，因为我们表明混合阱的一个新特性是，即使对于单电荷纳米球体，光机械冷却也由保罗阱主动驱动。
