CPM Seminar

Strong dispersive coupling between an optical cavity and a micromechanical membrane

Jack Harris

Department of Physics
Yale University

Very sensitive mechanical detectors are rapidly approaching a regime in which either the mechanical device itself or its read out should demonstrate quantum behavior. As a result, mechanical systems will soon constitute a new type of mesoscopics. I will describe how this rapidly-growing field unites devices spanning a factor of 10¹⁷ in size, and what some of its goals are. I will focus on a new type of mechanical system we have developed, in which a 1 mm-square, 50 nm-thick membrane is coupled to a high-finesse optical cavity. This coupling is strong enough for us to laser-cool the membrane from room tempeature to 7 mK. The coupling between the mechanical device and the optical field is similar to the coupling in cavity-QED experiments, and I will describe how we hope to take advantage of this to observe a number of interesting quantum effects, including energy quantization of the mechanical oscillator.