Cooling of a massive pendulum to its ground state for test of generalized uncertainty principle

2017 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 15H05444
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Young Scientists (A)
• Allocation Type: Single-year Grants
• Research Field: Particle/Nuclear/Cosmic ray/Astro physics
• Research Institution: Tohoku University
• Principal Investigator: MATSUMOTO Nobuyuki 東北大学, 学際科学フロンティア研究所, 助教 (30750294)
• Project Period (FY): 2015-04-01 – 2018-03-31
• Keywords: フィードバック冷却 / オプトメカニクス / 変位計測 / 重力波 / 量子重力

Outline of Final Research Achievements

We developed an optical triangular cavity with a suspended mg-scale mirror for cooling the mirror's center-of-mass motion to its ground state. As a result, our system operates within a factor of 50 of the free-mass standard quantum limit, providing a displacement sensitivity of 5e-17 m/sqrt(Hz)@1 kHz. It may be possible to test a minimal length scale by interacting a pulse of light with such a massive oscillator prepared in its motional ground state.

Free Research Field

オプトメカニクス