Radiation Pressure Cooling of a Micromechanical Oscillator Using Dynamical Backaction

In this paper, the authors report on the first the experimental observation of this phenomenon using very high-finesse toroidal silica microresonators (Schliesser, 2006). These structures possess whispering gallery type optical modes (with photon lifetimes up to 500 ns) while simultaneously exhibiting micromechanical resonances in the radio-frequency domain. We study the interaction of the intracavity light with the ~60 MHz radial breathing mode of the cavity.