The measurement of weak continuous forces exerted on a mechanical oscillator is a fundamental problem in various physical experiments. It is fundamentally impeded by quantum back-action from the meter used to sense the displacement of the oscillator. In the context of interferometric displacement measurements, we here propose and demonstrate the working principle of a scheme for coherent back-action cancellation. By measuring the amplitude quadrature of the light reflected from a detuned optomechanical cavity inside which a stiff optical spring is generated, back-action can be cancelled in a narrow band of frequencies. This method provides a simple way to improve the sensitivity in experiments limited by quantum back-action without injection of squeezed light or stable homodyne readout.
It is predicted that in force microscopy the quantum fluctuations responsible for the Casimir force can be directly observed as temperature-independent force fluctuations having spectral density $9pi/(40ln(4/e)) hbar delta k$, where $hbar$ is Plancks constant and $delta k$ is the observed change in spring constant as the microscope tip approaches a sample. For typical operating parameters the predicted force noise is of order $10^{-18}$ Newton in one Hertz of bandwidth. The Second Law is respected via the fluctuation-dissipation theorem. For small tip-sample separations the cantilever damping is predicted to increase as temperature is reduced, a behavior that is reminiscent of the Kondo effect.
Quantum noise limits the sensitivity of precision measurement devices, such as laser interferometer gravitational-wave observatories and axion detectors. In the shot-noise-limited regime, these resonant detectors are subject to a trade-off between the peak sensitivity and bandwidth. One approach to circumvent this limitation in gravitational-wave detectors is to embed an anomalous-dispersion optomechanical filter to broaden the bandwidth. The original filter cavity design, however, makes the entire system unstable. Recently, we proposed the coherent feedback between the arm cavity and the optomechanical filter to eliminate the instability via PT-symmetry. The original analysis based upon the Hamiltonian formalism adopted the single-mode and resolved-sideband approximations. In this paper, we go beyond these approximations and consider realistic parameters. We show that the main conclusion concerning stability remains intact, with both Nyquist analysis and a detailed time-domain simulation.
Between mirrors, the density of electromagnetic modes differs from the one in free space. This changes the radiation properties of an atom as well as the light forces acting on an atom. It has profound consequences in the strong-coupling regime of cavity quantum electrodynamics. For a single atom trapped inside the cavity, we investigate the atom-cavity system by scanning the frequency of a probe laser for various atom-cavity detunings. The avoided crossing between atom and cavity resonance is visible in the transmission of the cavity. It is also visible in the loss rate of the atom from the intracavity dipole trap. On the normal-mode resonances, the dominant contribution to the loss rate originates from dipole-force fluctuations which are dramatically enhanced in the cavity. This conclusion is supported by Monte-Carlo simulations.
We study the nonreciprocal transmission and the fast-slow light effects in a cavity optomechanical system, in which the cavity supports a clockwise and a counter-clockwise circulating optical modes, both the two modes are driven simultaneously by a strong pump field and a weak signal field. We find that when the intrinsic photon loss of the cavity is equal to the external coupling loss of the cavity, the system reveals a nonreciprocal transmission of the signal fields. However, when the intrinsic photon loss is much less than the external coupling loss, the nonreciprocity about the transmission properties almost disappears, and the nonreciprocity is shown in the group delay properties of the signal fields, and the system exhibits a nonreciprocal fast-slow light propagation phenomenon.
Optical cavities with both optimized resonant conditions and high quality factors are important metrological tools. In particular, they are used for laser gravitational wave (GW) detectors. It is necessary to suppress the parametric instability by damping the resonant conditions of harmful higher order optical modes (HOOM) in order to have high cavity powers in GW detectors. This can be achieved effectively by using non spherical mirrors in symmetric Fabry-Perot (FP) cavities by increasing roundtrip losses of HOOMs. Fabry-Perot cavities in most of the GW detectors have non-identical mirrors to optimize clipping losses and reduce thermal noise by reducing the beam size on one side of the cavity facing to the beam splitter and recycling cavities. We here present a general method to design non spherical non-identical mirrors in non-symmetric FP cavities to damp HOOMs. The proposed design allows to the suppress the loss of the arm power caused by point absorbers on test masses.