18–23 Aug 2014
Nordita, Stockholm
Europe/Stockholm timezone

Hybrid atom-optomechanics

22 Aug 2014, 16:45
45m
Oskar Klein-auditoriet (FR4) (Nordita, Stockholm)

Oskar Klein-auditoriet (FR4)

Nordita, Stockholm

Speaker

Prof. Philipp Treutlein (University of Basel, Switzerland)

Description

Abstract: In optomechanics, laser light is used for cooling and control of the vibrations of micromechanical oscillators, with many similarities to the cooling and trapping of atoms. Laser light can also be used to couple the motion of ultracold atoms in a trap to the vibrations of a mechanical oscillator. In the resulting hybrid system the atoms can be used for sympathetic cooling of the oscillator, creating atom-oscillator entanglement, and controlling the oscillator on the single-phonon level. We have realized a hybrid mechanical system in which ultracold atoms and a micromechanical membrane are coupled by radiation pressure forces. The atoms are trapped in an optical lattice, formed by retro-reflection of a laser beam from an optical cavity that contains the membrane as mechanical element. When we laser cool the atoms, we observe that the membrane is sympathetically cooled from ambient to millikelvin temperatures through its interaction with the atoms. Sympathetic cooling with ultracold atoms or ions has previously been used to cool other microscopic systems such as atoms of a different species or molecular ions up to the size of proteins. Here we use it to efficiently cool the fundamental vibrational mode of a macroscopic solid-state system, whose mass exceeds that of the atomic ensemble by ten orders of magnitude. Our hybrid system operates in a regime of large atom-membrane cooperativity. With realistic improvements it enables ground-state cooling and quantum control of low-frequency oscillators such as membranes or levitated nanoparticles, in a regime where purely optomechanical techniques cannot reach the ground state. References: [1] A. Jöckel, A. Faber, T. Kampschulte, M. Korppi, M. T. Rakher, and P. Treutlein, "Sympathetic cooling of a membrane oscillator in a hybrid mechanical-atomic system", submitted (2014). [2] B. Vogell, K. Stannigel, P. Zoller, K. Hammerer, M. T. Rakher, M. Korppi, A. Jöckel, and P. Treutlein, "Cavity-enhanced long-distance coupling of an atomic ensemble to a micromechanical membrane", Phys. Rev. A 87, 023816 (2013). [3] P. Treutlein, C. Genes, K. Hammerer, M. Poggio, and P. Rabl, "Hybrid Mechanical Systems", in: "Cavity Optomechanics", ed. by M. Aspelmeyer, T. Kippenberg, F. Marquardt (Springer). preprint arXiv:1210.4151 (2012). [4] S. Camerer, M. Korppi, A. Jöckel, D. Hunger, T. W. Hänsch, and P. Treutlein, "Realization of an optomechanical interface between ultracold atoms and a membrane", Phys. Rev. Lett. 107, 223001 (2011).

Presentation materials