Cooling of a gram-scale cantilever flexure to 70 mK with a servo-modified optical spring

Abstract

A series of recent articles have presented results demonstrating optical cooling of macroscopic objects, highlighting the importance of this phenomenon for investigations of macroscopic quantum mechanics and its implications for thermal noise in gravitational wave detectors. In this Letter, we present a measurement of the off-resonance suspension thermal noise of a 1 g oscillator, and we show that it can be cooled to just 70 mK. The cooling is achieved by using a servo to impose a phase delay between oscillator motion and optical force. A model is developed to show how optical rigidity and optical cooling can be interchangeable using this technique.