Pulsed laser cooling for cavity optomechanical resonators

A pulsed cooling scheme for optomechanical systems is presented that is capable of cooling at much faster rates, shorter overall cooling times, and for a wider set of experimental scenarios than is possible by conventional methods. The proposed scheme can be implemented for both strongly and weakly coupled optomechanical systems in both weakly and highly dissipative cavities. We study analytically its underlying working mechanism, which is based on interferometric control of optomechanical interactions, and we demonstrate its efficiency with pulse sequences that are obtained by using methods from optimal control. The short time in which our scheme approaches the optomechanical ground state allows for a significant relaxation of current experimental constraints. Finally, the framework presented here can be used to create a rich variety of optomechanical interactions and hence offers a novel, readily available toolbox for fast optomechanical quantum control.