Optomechanical cooling beyond the quantum backaction limit with frequency modulation

Abstract

In the usual optomechanical cooling, even if the system has no thermal component, it still has a quantum limit-known as the quantum backaction limit (QBL)-on the minimum phonon number related to shot noise. By studying the side-band cooling regime in optomechanical system (OMS), we find that the cooling can be improved significantly when the frequency modulation (FM) that can suppress the Stokes heating processes is introduced into the system. We analyze and demonstrate the reasons of the phonon number below the QBL redefined in the whole stable region of the standard OMSs. The above analyses are further checked by numerically solving the differential equations of second order moments derived from the quantum master equation with broad system parameters, ranging from weak coupling (WC) to ultra-strong coupling (USC) and resolved side-band (RSB) to unresolved side-band (USB) regimes. Comparing with the cases of those without FM, the stable ground-state cooling can also be achieved even in the conventional unstable region.