Cold Damping of an Optically Levitated Nanoparticle to Microkelvin Temperatures

Abstract

We implement a cold-damping scheme to cool one mode of the center-of-mass motion of an optically levitated nanoparticle in ultrahigh vacuum (10^{-8} mbar) from room temperature to a record-low temperature of 100 μK. The measured temperature dependence on the feedback gain and thermal decoherence rate is in excellent agreement with a parameter-free model. For the first time, we determine the imprecision-backaction product for a levitated optomechanical system and discuss the resulting implications for ground-state cooling of an optically levitated nanoparticle.