title: An all-optical trap for a gram-scale mirror.
abstract: We report on a stable optical trap suitable for a macroscopic mirror, wherein the dynamics of the mirror are fully dominated by radiation pressure. The technique employs two frequency-offset laser fields to simultaneously create a stiff optical restoring force and a viscous optical damping force. We show how these forces may be used to optically trap a free mass without introducing thermal noise, and we demonstrate the technique experimentally with a 1 g mirror. The observed optical spring has an inferred Young's modulus of 1.2 TPa, 20% stiffer than diamond. The trap is intrinsically cold and reaches an effective temperature of 0.8 K, limited by technical noise in our apparatus.
authors.affiliation: LIGO Laboratory, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02139, USA.
authors.forename: Thomas
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Corbitt
authors.forename: Yanbei
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Chen
authors.forename: Edith
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Innerhofer
authors.forename: Helge
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Müller-Ebhardt
authors.forename: David
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Ottaway
authors.forename: Henning
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Rehbein
authors.forename: Daniel
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Sigg
authors.forename: Stanley
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Whitcomb
authors.forename: Christopher
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Wipf
authors.forename: Nergis
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Mavalvala