Optical phase-space reconstruction of mirror motion at the attometer level

Tristan Briant (1) , Pierre-François Cohadon (1) , Michel Pinard (1) , Antoine Heidmann (1)

1 LKB (Jussieu) - Laboratoire Kastler Brossel

We describe an experiment in which the quadratures of the position of an harmonically-bound mirror are observed at the attometer level. We have studied the Brownian motion of the mirror, both in the free regime and in the cold-damped regime when an external viscous force is applied by radiation pressure. We have also studied the thermal-noise squeezing when the external force is parametrically modulated. We have observed both the 50% theoretical limit of squeezing at low gain and the parametric oscillation of the mirror for a large gain.

Domaines: Physique Quantique [quant-ph]

Tristan Briant, Pierre-François Cohadon, Michel Pinard, Antoine Heidmann. Optical phase-space reconstruction of mirror motion at the attometer level. The European Physical Journal D : Atomic, molecular, optical and plasma physics, 2003, 22, pp.131. ⟨hal-00001602⟩