Abstract
We experimentally realize cavity cooling of all three translational degrees of motion of a levitated nanoparticle in vacuum. The particle is trapped by a cavity-independent optical tweezer and coherently scatters tweezer light into the blue detuned cavity mode. For vacuum pressures around , minimal temperatures along the cavity axis in the millikelvin regime are observed. Simultaneously, the center-of-mass (c.m.) motion along the other two spatial directions is cooled to minimal temperatures of a few hundred millikelvin. Measuring temperatures and damping rates as the pressure is varied, we find that the cooling efficiencies depend on the particle position within the intracavity standing wave. This data and the behavior of the c.m. temperatures as functions of cavity detuning and tweezer power are consistent with a theoretical analysis of the experiment. Experimental limits and opportunities of our approach are outlined.
- Received 21 December 2018
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.122.123601
Published by the American Physical Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the published article’s title, journal citation, and DOI.
Published by the American Physical Society
Physics Subject Headings (PhySH)
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Nanoparticles Get Cool by Light Scattering
Published 27 March 2019
Researchers performed 3D cavity cooling of levitated nanoparticles, reaching record low temperatures by utilizing light that scatters off the particles.
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