Coherent Feedback Cooling of a Nanomechanical Membrane with Atomic Spins

Coherent feedback stabilizes a system toward a target state without the need of a measurement, thus avoiding the quantum backaction inherent to measurements. Here, we employ optical coherent feedback to remotely cool a nanomechanical membrane using atomic spins as a controller. Direct manipulation of the atoms allows us to tune from strong coupling to an overdamped regime. Making use of the full coherent control offered by our system, we perform spin-membrane state swaps combined with stroboscopic spin pumping to cool the membrane in a room-temperature environment to T=216  mK (¯nm=2.3×103  phonons) in 200  μs. We furthermore observe and study the effects of delayed feedback on the cooling performance. Starting from a cryogenically precooled membrane, this method would enable cooling of the mechanical oscillator close to its quantum mechanical ground state and the preparation of nonclassical states.