Laser cooling and control of excitations in superfluid helium

Abstract

Superfluidity is an emergent quantum phenomenon which arises due to strong interactions between elementary excitations in liquid helium. These excitations have been probed with great success using techniques such as neutron and light scattering. However measurements to-date have been limited, quite generally, to average properties of bulk superfluid or the driven response far out of thermal equilibrium. Here, we use cavity optomechanics to probe the thermodynamics of superfluid excitations in real-time. Furthermore, strong light-matter interactions allow both laser cooling and amplification of the thermal motion. This provides a new tool to understand and control the microscopic behaviour of superfluids, including phonon-phonon interactions, quantised vortices and two-dimensional quantum phenomena such as the Berezinskii-Kosterlitz-Thouless transition. The third sound modes studied here also offer a pathway towards quantum optomechanics with thin superfluid films, including femtogram effective masses, high mechanical quality factors, strong phonon-phonon and phonon-vortex interactions, and self-assembly into complex geometries with sub-nanometre feature size.

6 pages, 4 figures. Supplementary information attached

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• Magnetic Actuation and Feedback Cooling of a Cavity Optomechanical Torque Sensor
• Ultra-Low Dissipation Superfluid Micromechanical Resonator
• Thin film superfluid optomechanics
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• Layering transitions in superfluid helium adsorbed on a carbon nanotube mechanical resonator
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• Integrating superfluids with superconducting qubit systems
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• Universal expansion of vortex clusters in a dissipative two-dimensional superfluid
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• Third sound detectors in accelerated motion
• Counterflow-Induced Inverse Energy Cascade in Three-Dimensional Superfluid Turbulence
• Detecting the "phonon wind" in superfluid ${}^4\mathrm{He}$ by a nanomechanical resonator
• Phonon coupling between a nanomechanical resonator and a quantum fluid
• Modelling of vorticity, sound and their interaction in two-dimensional superfluids
• Proposal for a quantum traveling Brillouin resonator
• Electromechanical feedback control of nanoscale superflow
• Phononic Crystals in Superfluid Thin-Film Helium
• Engineered entropic forces allow ultrastrong dynamical backaction
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• Spatial distribution of superfluidity and superfluid distillation of Bose liquids
• A cryogenic chamber setup for superfluid helium experiments with optical fiber and electrical access
• Ultra-high Q Acoustic Resonance in Superfluid 4He
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