arXiv subjects

Samuel Deleglise

Publications and source records attributed to Samuel Deleglise.

5 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2021

Laser cooling of a Planck mass object close to the quantum ground state

Quantum mechanics has so far not been tested for mechanical objects at the scale of the Planck mass $\sqrt{\hbar c/ G} \simeq 22\,μ\mathrm{g}$. We present an experiment where a 1 mm quartz micropillar resonating at 3.6 MHz with an effective mass of 30 $μ$g is cooled to 500 mK with a dilution refrigerator, and further optomechanically sideband-cooled to an effective temperature of 3 mK, corresponding to a mode thermal occupancy of 20 phonons. This nearly 1000-fold increase in the mass of an optomechanical system with respect to previous experiments near the quantum ground state opens new perspectives in the exploration of the quantum/classical border.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2019

Probing a two-level system bath via the frequency shift of an off-resonantly-driven cavity

Although the main loss channel of planar microwave superconducting resonators has been identified to be related to an external coupling to a two-level system (TLS) bath, the behavior of such a cavity in the presence of an off-resonant pump has yet to be fully understood. Here a semi-classical model that predicts a power-dependent frequency shift besides the well-known TLS-induced damping is derived. The model is validated experimentally by performing a two-tone spectroscopy of several resonators fabricated on various substrates. Together with the provided analytic formulas, the technique proposed here is a simple, yet powerful, tool to characterize various properties of the TLS bath, such as their average dephasing rate.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2010

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 low entropy quantum states of large scale 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 3He gas. Two-level system induced damping via structural defect states is shown to be strongly reduced, and simultaneously serves as novel thermometry method to independently quantify excess heating due to the cooling laser. We demonstrate that dynamical backaction sideband cooling can reduce the average occupancy to 9+-1 quanta, implying that the mechanical oscillator can be found (10+- 1)% of the time in its quantum ground state.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2010

Determination of the vacuum optomechanical coupling rate using frequency noise calibration

The strength of optomechanical interactions in a cavity optomechanical system can be quantified by a vacuum coupling rate $\vcr$ analogous to cavity quantum electrodynamics. This single figure of merit removes the ambiguity in the frequently quoted coupling parameter defining the frequency shift for a given mechanical displacement, and the effective mass of the mechanical mode. Here we demonstrate and verify a straightforward experimental technique to derive the vacuum optomechanical coupling rate. It only requires applying a known frequency modulation of the employed electromagnetic probe field and knowledge of the mechanical oscillator's occupation. The method is experimentally verified for a micromechanical mode in a toroidal whispering-gallery-resonator and a nanomechanical oscillator coupled to a toroidal cavity via its near field.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2008

Reconstruction of non-classical cavity field states with snapshots of their decoherence

The state of a microscopic system encodes its complete quantum description, from which the probabilities of all measurement outcomes are inferred. Being a statistical concept, the state cannot be obtained from a single system realization. It can be reconstructed from an ensemble of copies, by performing measurements on different realizations. Reconstructing the state of a set of trapped particles shielded from their environment is an important step for the investigation of the quantum to classical boundary. While trapped atom state reconstructions have been achieved, it is challenging to perform similar experiments with trapped photons which require cavities storing light for very long times. Here, we report the complete reconstruction and pictorial representation of a variety of radiation states trapped in a cavity in which several photons survive long enough to be repeatedly measured. Information is extracted from the field by atoms crossing the cavity one by one. We exhibit a gallery of pictures featuring coherent states, Fock states with a definite photon number and Schrodinger cat states which are superpositions of coherent states with different phases. These states are equivalently represented by their density matrices in the photon-number basis or by their Wigner functions, which are distributions of the field complex amplitude. Quasi-classical coherent states have a Gaussian-shaped Wigner function while Fock and Schrodinger cat Wigner functions show oscillations and negativities revealing quantum interferences. Cavity damping induces decoherence which quickly washes out the Wigner functions oscillations. We observe this process and realize movies of decoherence by reconstructing snapshots of Schrodinger cat states at successive times.

quant-ph↗