Optical Refrigeration for an Optomechanical Amplifier

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We explore the viability of using optical refrigeration as a low-vibration cooling method for a phase-sensitive optomechanical amplifier proposed to improve the sensitivity of future gravitational wave detectors.

• We find that with moderate improvements on coolants currently available, optical refrigeration can improve the amplifier gain by a factor of 10 relative to what is possible with radiative cooling.
• We also show that the technique does not add significant noise to the amplifier.
• These results indicate that optical refrigeration can play an important role in cooling optomechanical devices.