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Originally published in Science Express on 11 September 2008
Science 10 October 2008:
Vol. 322. no. 5899, pp. 235 - 238
DOI: 10.1126/science.1163218
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Reports

Cavity Optomechanics with a Bose-Einstein Condensate

Ferdinand Brennecke,* Stephan Ritter,* Tobias Donner, Tilman Esslinger{dagger}

Cavity optomechanics studies the coupling between a mechanical oscillator and the electromagnetic field in a cavity. We report on a cavity optomechanical system in which a collective density excitation of a Bose-Einstein condensate serves as the mechanical oscillator coupled to the cavity field. A few photons inside the ultrahigh-finesse cavity trigger strongly driven back-action dynamics, in quantitative agreement with a cavity optomechanical model. We approach the strong coupling regime of cavity optomechanics, where a single excitation of the mechanical oscillator substantially influences the cavity field. The results open up new directions for investigating mechanical oscillators in the quantum regime and the border between classical and quantum physics.

Institute for Quantum Electronics, ETH Zürich, CH-8093 Zürich, Switzerland.

* These authors contributed equally to this work.

{dagger} To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: esslinger{at}phys.ethz.ch

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THIS ARTICLE HAS BEEN CITED BY OTHER ARTICLES:
Cavity opto-mechanics using an optically levitated nanosphere.
D. E. Chang, C. A. Regal, S. B. Papp, D. J. Wilson, J. Ye, O. Painter, H. J. Kimble, and P. Zoller (2010)
PNAS 107, 1005-1010
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