Sympathetic laser-cooling of graphene with Casimir-Polder forces

TL;DR

This paper proposes a novel method to cool graphene sheets to microkelvin temperatures using laser-cooled atoms coupled via Casimir-Polder forces, enabling active control of graphene's vibrational modes.

Contribution

It introduces a new active cooling scheme for graphene employing cold atoms and vacuum forces, with a detailed theoretical model and potential for significant temperature reduction.

Findings

Graphene can be cooled from room temperature to ~60 microkelvin.

The proposed scheme effectively couples atomic gases to graphene via Casimir-Polder forces.

Theoretical framework supports experimental feasibility of active laser cooling of graphene.

Abstract

We propose a scheme to actively cool the fundamental flexural (out-of-plane) mode of a graphene sheet via vacuum forces. Our setup consists in a cold atom cloud placed close to a graphene sheet at distances of a few micrometers. The atoms couple to the graphene membrane via Casimir-Polder forces. By deriving a self-consistent set of equations governing the dynamics of the atomic gas and the flexural modes of the graphene, we show to be possible to cool graphene from room temperatures by actively (laser) cooling an atomic gas. By choosing the right set of experimental parameter we are able to cool a graphene sheet down to ~ 60 microkelvin.