Optomechanical cooling in the non-Markovian regime

Abstract

We propose a scheme in which the cooling of a mechanical resonator is achieved by exposing the optomechanical system to a non-Markovian environment. Because of the backflow from the non-Markovian environment, the phonon number can go beyond the conventional cooling limit in a Markovian environment. Utilizing the spectrum density obtained in a recent experiment [S. Gr\"oblacher et al., Nat. Commun. 6, 7606 (2015)], we show that the cooling process is highly effective in a non-Markovian environment. Analysis of the cooling mechanism in a non-Markovian environment reveals that the non-Markovian memory effect is instrumental in the cooling process.