High-sensitivity optical measurement of mechanical Brownian motion

Yassine Hadjar , Pierre-François Cohadon (1) , Carl C. G. Aminoff , Michel Pinard (1) , Antoine Heidmann (1)

1 LKB (Jussieu) - Laboratoire Kastler Brossel

We describe an experiment in which a laser beam is sent into a high-finesse optical cavity with a mirror coated on a mechanical resonator. We show that the reflected light is very sensitive to small mirror displacements. We have observed the Brownian motion of the resonator with a very high sensitivity.

Domaines: Physique Quantique [quant-ph]

Yassine Hadjar, Pierre-François Cohadon, Carl C. G. Aminoff, Michel Pinard, Antoine Heidmann. High-sensitivity optical measurement of mechanical Brownian motion. EPL - Europhysics Letters, 1999, 47, pp.545. ⟨hal-00001598⟩