Experimental optomechanics with silicon micro-mirrors

In this paper, the motion of a silicon micro-mechanical resonator is optically monitored with a very high-finesse optical cavity down to a quantum-limited sensitivity at the 10^-19 m/radicHz level. The high resonance frequency of the resonator (in the MHz range), its low mass (below 1 mg) and the extreme sensitivity open the way to radiation pressure-driven quantum optics experiments. Here, direct effect of intracavity radiation pressure upon the dynamics of the micro-resonator in a detuned high-finesse optical cavity is demonstrated: depending on the sign of the detuning, we have obtained both cooling and heating, with an effective temperature ranging from 10 to 2000 K .