Atom assisted cavity cooling of a micromechanical oscillator in the unresolved sideband regime

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates ground-state cooling of a micromechanical oscillator in an optomechanical cavity with atoms, using quantum interference effects to achieve cooling in the unresolved sideband regime.

Contribution

It introduces a method leveraging atom-assisted quantum interference to enable ground-state cooling in the unresolved sideband regime, which is challenging with traditional techniques.

Findings

Achieved ground-state cooling of the mechanical oscillator.

Modified noise spectrum enhances cooling efficiency.

Demonstrated asymmetric cooling and heating rates.

Abstract

The ground state cooling of a mechanical oscillator in an optomechanical cavity containing an ensemble of identical two-level ground-state atoms is studied in the highly unresolved-sideband regime. The system exhibits electromagnetically-induced transparency-like quantum interference effect. The mutual interaction with the cavity optical field gives rise to an indirect coupling between the atomic and mechanical modes. In presence of this interaction, the noise spectrum gets modified and leads to asymmetric cooling and heating rates. Using the quantum master equation, time evolution of the average phonon number is studied and it is observed that the average phonon occupancy in the mechanical resonator exhibits ground-state cooling.