Optomechanical sideband cooling of a micromechanical oscillator close to the quantum ground state
Optomechanical sideband cooling of a micromechanical oscillator close to the quantum ground state
Cooling a mesoscopic mechanical oscillator to its quantum ground state is elementary for the preparation and control of quantum states of mechanical objects. Here, we pre-cool a 70-MHz micromechanical silica oscillator to an occupancy below 200 quanta by thermalizing it with a 600-mK cold $^{3}\mathrm{He}$ gas. Two-level-system induced damping via …