Quantum-Opto-Mechanics

Quantum optomechanics has now emerged as a new, thriving field of research at the interface between quantum optics, quantum information and solid-state physics. It allows access to a new parameter regime of experimental physics with a plethora of applications: from novel on-chip devices for silicon photonics over hybrid architectures for quantum information processing to fundamental tests at the interface between quantum physics and gravity. Research in the START project QOM has contributed several milestone achievements to the field of quantum optomechanics, including the first demonstration of the strong coupling regime between an optical cavity field and a micromechanical mirror and the first demonstration of laser-cooling a micromechanical device into its quantum ground state of motion, which are important pre-conditions to achieve full quantum control over mechanical devices, as well as the first demonstration of cooling by measurement through the concept of pulsed quantum optomechanics, which is a new approach to realize quantum non-demolition measurements of massive objects. The investigation of optomechanical properties of optical coatings has resulted in the development of a new technology to significantly reduce thermal noise in optical interferometry. Finally, we have proposed several experiments involving massive mechanical resonators that allow to test the interplay between quantum physics and gravity, both by testing so-called collapse theories that have been suggested as possible variants of quantum theory to solve the quantum measurement problem and by testing possible theories of quantum gravity in table-top quantum optics experiments.