High Finesse Opto-Mechanical Cavity with a Movable Thirty-Micron-Size Mirror

Abstract

We report on the demonstration of a high finesse micro-optomechanical system and identify potential applications ranging from optical cooling to weak force detection to massive quantum superpositions. The system consists of a high quality diameter flat dielectric mirror cut from a larger substrate with a focused ion beam and attached to an atomic force microscope cantilever. Cavity ring-down measurements performed on a 25 mm long Fabry-Pérot cavity with the 30 microm mirror at one end show an optical finesse of 2100. Numerical calculations show that the finesse is not diffraction limited and that orders of magnitude higher finesse should be possible. A mechanical quality factor of more than 10(5) at pressures below 10(-3) mbar is demonstrated for the cantilever with a mirror attached.

Diffraction-limited high-finesse optical cavities

“…This method is a significant improvement over the canonical diffraction kernel approach [7,8], which is not suited to accurate simulations of very-low-loss cavities. A rudimentary calculation of this type was used previously by the authors in the context of an optomechanical system [9] and a related method was developed independently by Klaassen et al to characterize cavities with chaotic mode structures [10]. Using this method, it is possible to calculate the effects of a wide number of imperfections, such as finite mirror size, defocusing, wavefront error, or even removal of sections of the mirror (Fig.…”

An All-Optical Trap for a Gram-Scale Mirror

“…However, optical damping produces cooling in a red-detuned cavity, while antidamping heats, or even leads to instability in a blue-detuned cavity [1][2][3][4][5]14,15]. In GW detectors, on the other hand, the optical spring force may dominate, since the mechanical suspension of their mirrors is very soft.…”

Dynamic entanglement transfer in a double-cavity optomechanical system

“…Cavity optomechanical systems [1] arise from the classical Fabry-Perot interferometer [2] by replacing one of the fixed sidewalls with a cantilever or double-clamped beam [3][4][5]. The one-dimensional degree of freedom introduced by the movable mechanical element adds a free resonator mode to the cavity system and allows this mode to interact with the cavity field through radiation pressure on the reflectively coated mechanical resonator.…”