T. J. Kippenberg

The ability to tailor laser light on a chip using integrated photonics has allowed for extensive control over fundamental light-matter interactions in manifold quantum systems including atoms, trapped ions, quantum dots, and defect centers. Free electrons, enabling high-resolution microscopy for decades, are increasingly becoming the subject of laser-based quantum manipulation. Using free-space optical excitation and intense laser pulses, this has led to the observation of free-electron quantum walks, attosecond electron pulses, and imaging of electromagnetic fields. Enhancing the interaction with electron beams through chip-based photonics promises unique applications in nanoscale quantum control and sensing, but has yet to enter electron microscopy. Here, we merge integrated photonics with electron microscopy, demonstrating coherent phase modulation of an electron beam using a silicon nitride microresonator driven by a continuous-wave laser. The high-Q factor (~$10^6$) cavity enhancement and a waveguide designed for phase matching lead to efficient electron-light scattering at unprecedentedly low, few-microwatt optical powers. Specifically, we fully deplete the initial electron state at a cavity-coupled power of 6 $μ$W and create >500 photon sidebands for only 38 mW in the bus waveguide. Moreover, we demonstrate $μ$eV electron energy gain spectroscopy (EEGS). Providing simultaneous optical and electronic spectroscopy of the resonant cavity, the fiber-coupled photonic structures feature single-mode electron-light interaction with full control over the input and output channels. This approach establishes a versatile framework for exploring free-electron quantum optics, with future developments in strong coupling, local quantum probing, and electron-photon entanglement. Our results highlight the potential of integrated photonics to efficiently interface free electrons and light.

Micro- and nanoscale opto-mechanical systems provide radiation pressure coupling of optical and mechanical degree of freedom and are actively pursued for their ability to explore quantum mechanical phenomena of macroscopic objects. Many of these investigations require preparation of the mechanical system in or close to its quantum ground state. Remarkable progress in ground state cooling has been achieved for trapped ions and atoms confined in optical lattices. Imperative to this progress has been the technique of resolved sideband cooling, which allows overcoming the inherent temperature limit of Doppler cooling and necessitates a harmonic trapping frequency which exceeds the atomic species' transition rate. The recent advent of cavity back-action cooling of mechanical oscillators by radiation pressure has followed a similar path with Doppler-type cooling being demonstrated, but lacking inherently the ability to attain ground state cooling as recently predicted. Here we demonstrate for the first time resolved sideband cooling of a mechanical oscillator. By pumping the first lower sideband of an optical microcavity, whose decay rate is more than twenty times smaller than the eigen-frequency of the associated mechanical oscillator, cooling rates above 1.5 MHz are attained. Direct spectroscopy of the motional sidebands reveals 40-fold suppression of motional increasing processes, which could enable reaching phonon occupancies well below unity (<0.03). Elemental demonstration of resolved sideband cooling as reported here should find widespread use in opto-mechanical cooling experiments. Apart from ground state cooling, this regime allows realization of motion measurement with an accuracy exceeding the standard quantum limit.

A quantum theory of cooling of a mechanical oscillator by radiation pressure-induced dynamical back-action is developed, which is analogous to sideband cooling of trapped ions. We find that final occupancies well below unity can be attained when the mechanical oscillation frequency is larger than the cavity linewidth. It is shown that the final average occupancy can be retrieved directly from the optical output spectrum.