Cavity cooling of a nanomechanical resonator by light scattering

TL;DR

This paper introduces a new opto-mechanical cooling method using a high finesse cavity to cool nanomechanical resonators via light scattering, potentially achieving ground-state cooling.

Contribution

It proposes a novel cavity cooling scheme for nanomechanical resonators based on scattering within a small mode volume cavity.

Findings

Predicted ground-state cooling of nanorods is achievable.

The scheme effectively reduces thermal fluctuations of the resonator.

The method extends opto-mechanical cooling techniques to sub-wavelength structures.

Abstract

We present a novel method for opto-mechanical cooling of sub-wavelength sized nanomechanical resonators. Our scheme uses a high finesse Fabry-Perot cavity of small mode volume, within which the nanoresonator is acting as a position-dependant perturbation by scattering. In return, the back-action induced by the cavity affects the nanoresonator dynamics and can cool its fluctuations. We investigate such cavity cooling by scattering for a nanorod structure and predict that ground-state cooling is within reach.