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Published June 18, 2021 | Accepted Version + Supplemental Material
Journal Article Open

Approaching the motional ground state of a 10-kg object

Whittle, Chris ORCID icon
Hall, Evan D. ORCID icon
Dwyer, Sheila ORCID icon
Mavalvala, Nergis
Sudhir, Vivishek ORCID icon
Abbott, R.
Ananyeva, A.
Austin, C.
Barsotti, L. ORCID icon
Betzwieser, J. ORCID icon
Blair, C. D. ORCID icon
Brooks, A. F. ORCID icon
Brown, D. D.
Buikema, A.
Cahillane, C. ORCID icon
Driggers, J. C. ORCID icon
Effler, A.
Fernandez-Galiana, A. ORCID icon
Fritschel, P. ORCID icon
Frolov, V. V.
Hardwick, T.
Kasprzack, M. ORCID icon
Kawabe, K. ORCID icon
Kijbunchoo, N. ORCID icon
Kissel, J. S. ORCID icon
Mansell, G. L.
Matichard, F. ORCID icon
McCuller, L. ORCID icon
McRae, T.
Mullavey, A. ORCID icon
Pele, A. ORCID icon
Schofield, R. M. S.
Sigg, D. ORCID icon
Tse, M. ORCID icon
Vajente, G. ORCID icon
Vander-Hyde, D. C.
Yu, Hang ORCID icon
Yu, Haocun
Adams, C.
Adhikari, R. X. ORCID icon
Appert, S.
Arai, K. ORCID icon
Areeda, J. S. ORCID icon
Asali, Y.
Aston, S. M.
Baer, A. M.
Ball, M.
Ballmer, S. W. ORCID icon
Banagiri, S.
Barker, D.
Bartlett, J.
Berger, B. K. ORCID icon
Bhattacharjee, D. ORCID icon
Billingsley, G. ORCID icon
Biscans, S. ORCID icon
Blair, R. M.
Bode, N. ORCID icon
Booker, P.
Bork, R.
Bramley, A.
Cannon, K. C. ORCID icon
Chen, X.
Ciobanu, A. A. ORCID icon
Clara, F.
Compton, C. M. ORCID icon
Cooper, S. J. ORCID icon
Corley, K. R.
Countryman, S. T. ORCID icon
Covas, P. B.
Coyne, D. C. ORCID icon
Datrier, L. E. H. ORCID icon
Davis, D. ORCID icon
Di Fronzo, C.
Dooley, K. L. ORCID icon
Dupej, P.
Etzel, T.
Evans, M. ORCID icon
Evans, T. M. ORCID icon
Feicht, J. ORCID icon
Fulda, P. ORCID icon
Fyffe, M.
Giaime, J. A. ORCID icon
Giardina, K. D.
Godwin, P.
Goetz, E. ORCID icon
Gras, S.
Gray, C.
Gray, R.
Green, A. C. ORCID icon
Gustafson, E. K.
Gustafson, R.
Hanks, J.
Hanson, J.
Hasskew, R. K.
Heintze, M. C.
Helmling-Cornell, A. F. ORCID icon
Holland, N. A.
Jones, J. D.
Kandhasamy, S. ORCID icon
Karki, S.
King, P. J.
Kumar, Rahul
Landry, M.
Lane, B. B. ORCID icon
Lantz, B. ORCID icon
Laxen, M. ORCID icon
Lecoeuche, Y. K.
Leviton, J.
Liu, J. ORCID icon
Lormand, M.
Lundgren, A. P.
Macas, R.
MacInnis, M. ORCID icon
Macleod, D. M. ORCID icon
Márka, S. ORCID icon
Márka, Z.
Martynov, D. V. ORCID icon
Mason, K.
Massinger, T. J.
McCarthy, R.
McClelland, D. E. ORCID icon
McCormick, S.
McIver, J. ORCID icon
Mendell, G.
Merfeld, K.
Merilh, E. L.
Meylahn, F. ORCID icon
Mistry, T.
Mittleman, R.
Moreno, G.
Mow-Lowry, C. M. ORCID icon
Mozzon, S. ORCID icon
Nelson, T. J. N.
Nguyen, P.
Nuttall, L. K. ORCID icon
Oberling, J.
Oram, Richard J.
Osthelder, C.
Ottaway, D. J. ORCID icon
Overmier, H.
Palamos, J. R.
Parker, W. ORCID icon
Payne, E.
Penhorwood, R.
Perez, C. J.
Pirello, M. ORCID icon
Radkins, H.
Ramirez, K. E. ORCID icon
Richardson, J. W. ORCID icon
Riles, K. ORCID icon
Robertson, N. A.
Rollins, J. G. ORCID icon
Romel, C. L.
Romie, J. H.
Ross, M. P. ORCID icon
Ryan, K.
Sadecki, T.
Sanchez, E. J.
Sanchez, L. E.
Saravanan, T. R.
Savage, R. L. ORCID icon
Schaetzl, D.
Schnabel, R. ORCID icon
Schwartz, E. ORCID icon
Sellers, D.
Shaffer, T.
Slagmolen, B. J. J.
Smith, J. R. ORCID icon
Soni, S.
Sorazu, B. ORCID icon
Spencer, A. P.
Strain, K. A. ORCID icon
Sun, L. ORCID icon
Szczepańczyk, M. J. ORCID icon
Thomas, M.
Thomas, P.
Thorne, K. A. ORCID icon
Toland, K.
Torrie, C. I.
Traylor, G.
Urban, A. L.
Valdes, G.
Veitch, P. J. ORCID icon
Venkateswara, K.
Venugopalan, G. ORCID icon
Viets, A. D. ORCID icon
Vo, T.
Vorvick, C. ORCID icon
Wade, M. ORCID icon
Ward, R. L.
Warner, J.
Weaver, B. ORCID icon
Weiss, R.
Willke, B. ORCID icon
Wipf, C. C.
Xiao, L. ORCID icon
Yamamoto, H. ORCID icon
Zhang, L. ORCID icon
Zucker, M. E. ORCID icon
Zweizig, J. ORCID icon

Abstract

The motion of a mechanical object, even a human-sized object, should be governed by the rules of quantum mechanics. Coaxing them into a quantum state is, however, difficult because the thermal environment masks any quantum signature of the object's motion. The thermal environment also masks the effects of proposed modifications of quantum mechanics at large mass scales. We prepared the center-of-mass motion of a 10-kilogram mechanical oscillator in a state with an average phonon occupation of 10.8. The reduction in temperature, from room temperature to 77 nanokelvin, is commensurate with an 11 orders-of-magnitude suppression of quantum back-action by feedback and a 13 orders-of-magnitude increase in the mass of an object prepared close to its motional ground state. Our approach will enable the possibility of probing gravity on massive quantum systems.

Additional Information

© 2021 American Association for the Advancement of Science. Received 26 February 2021; accepted 5 May 2021. V.S. thanks V. Vuletić for useful conversations. This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation's (NSF's) LIGO Laboratory, which is a major facility fully funded by the NSF. The authors gratefully acknowledge the support of the NSF for the construction and operation of the LIGO Laboratory and Advanced LIGO, as well as the Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC) of the United Kingdom, and the Max-Planck-Society (MPS) for support of the construction of Advanced LIGO. Additional support for Advanced LIGO was provided by the Australian Research Council. The authors acknowledge the LIGO Scientific Collaboration Fellows program for additional support. LIGO was constructed by the California Institute of Technology and Massachusetts Institute of Technology with funding from the National Science Foundation and operates under cooperative agreement no. PHY-1764464. Advanced LIGO was built under award no. PHY-0823459. E.D.H. is supported by the MathWorks, Inc. This manuscript is LIGO document no. LIGO-P2000525. The authors declare no competing interests. Author contributions: V.S., E.D.H., and N.M. conceived this project. C.W., E.D.H., S.D., and V.S. designed and implemented the modifications to the Advanced LIGO detector that enabled the experiment. All authors contributed to the running, diagnostics, and calibration of the detector. C.W., E.D.H., and V.S. analyzed the data. V.S. wrote the manuscript with help from E.D.H., C.W., and N.M. V.S. developed the theoretical models and supervised the project. Other LIGO collaboration authors contributed to the design, construction, and operation of Advanced LIGO and the development and maintenance of data handling, data reduction, and data analysis. All authors meet the journal's authorship criteria and have reviewed, discussed, and commented on the results and the manuscript. Data and materials availability: All data needed to evaluate the conclusions of this study are provided in the main text or the supplementary materials.

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Accepted Version - 2102.12665.pdf

Supplemental Material - abh2634-Whittle-SM.pdf

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Additional details

Created:
August 20, 2023
Modified:
October 23, 2023