Membrane-in-the-middle optomechanics with a soft-clamped membrane at milliKelvin temperatures

Abstract

Soft-clamped silicon nitride membrane resonators reach coherence times tau in excess of 100 ms at milliKelvin bath temperatures. However, harnessing strong optomechanical coupling in dry dilution refrigerators remains challenging due to vibration issues and heating by optical absorption. Here, we propose to address these issues with an actuator-free optical cavity and mechanical resonator design, in which the cavity is mounted on a simple vibration-isolation platform. We observe dynamical backaction when the cavity is driven with a free-space optical beam stabilized close to the red sideband using a two-beam locking scheme. Finally, we characterize the effect of absorption heating on the coherence time, and find a scaling with the intracavity power P as tau proportional to P to the power of -(0.34+/-0.04).

References in corpus (10)

• Strong dispersive coupling of a high finesse cavity to a micromechanical membrane
• Observation of Radiation Pressure Shot Noise on a Macroscopic Object
• Optomechanical sensing of spontaneous wave-function collapse
• Quantum-enabled interface between microwave and telecom light
• Optomechanical ground-state cooling in a continuous and efficient electro-optic transducer
• Ground State Cooling of an Ultracoherent Electromechanical System
• Laser cooling a membrane-in-the-middle system close to the quantum ground state from room temperature
• Soft-clamped phononic dimers for mechanical sensing and transduction
• Strong parametric coupling between two ultra-coherent membrane modes
• Realignment-free cryogenic macroscopic optical cavity coupled to an optical fiber

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• Quantum computer-enabled receivers for optical communication
• Generation of stable Gaussian cluster states in optomechanical systems with multifrequency drives
• Mechanical characterization of a membrane with an on-chip loss shield in a cryogenic environment
• Optomechanical Accelerometer Search for Ultralight Dark Matter