NIST logo

‘Radio Wave Cooling’ Offers New Twist on Laser Cooling

From NIST Tech Beat: September 13, 2007

Bookmark and Share

Contact: Laura Ost


silicon micro-cantilever
NIST physicists used radio waves to cool this silicon micro-cantilever, the narrow orange strip across the middle of this colorized micrograph. The cantilever, created by ion etching through a silicon wafer, lies parallel to a silicon radio-frequency electrode.
Credit: J. Britton/ NIST
View hi-resolution image


The NIST experiments used an RF circuit to cool a 200 x 14 x 1,500 micrometer silicon cantilever—a tiny diving board affixed at one end to a chip and similar to the tuning forks used in quartz crystal watches—vibrating at 7,000 cycles per second, its natural “resonant” frequency. Scientists cooled it from room temperature (about 23 degrees C, or 73 degrees F) to -228 C (-379 F). Other research groups have used optical techniques to chill micro-cantilevers to lower temperatures, but the RF technique may be more practical in some cases, because the equipment is smaller and easier to fabricate and integrate into cryogenic systems. By extending the RF method to higher frequencies at cryogenic temperatures, scientists hope eventually to cool a cantilever to its “ground state” near absolute zero (-273 C or -460 F) , where it would be essentially motionless and quantum behavior should emerge.

Laser cooling is akin to using the kinetic energy of millions of ping-pong balls (particles of light) striking a rolling bowling ball (such as an atom) to slow it down. The RF cooling technique, lead author Kenton Brown says, is more like pushing a child on a swing slightly out of synch with its back-and-forth motion to reduce its arc. In the NIST experiments, the cantilever’s mechanical motion is reduced by the force created between two electrically charged plates, one of which is the cantilever, which store energy like electrical capacitors. In the absence of any movement, the force would be stable, but in this case, it is modulated by the cantilever vibrations. The stored energy takes some time to change in response to the cantilever’s movement, and this delay pushes the cantilever slightly out of synch, damping its motion.

* K.R. Brown, J. Britton, R.J. Epstein, J. Chiaverini, D. Leibfried, and D.J. Wineland. 2007. Passive cooling of a micromechanical oscillator with a resonant electric circuit. Physical Review Letters. [Forthcoming].