Observation of a room-temperature oscillator's motion dominated by quantum fluctuations over a broad audio-frequency band

Abstract: We report on the broadband measurement of quantum radiation pressure noise (QRPN) in an optomechanical cavity at room temperature over a broad range of frequencies relevant to gravitational-wave detectors. We show that QRPN drives the motion of a high-reflectivity single-crystal microresonator, which serves as one mirror of a Fabry-Perot cavity. In our measurements QRPN dominates over all other noise between 10 kHz and 50 kHz and scales as expected with the circulating power inside the cavity. The thermal noise of the microresonator, the largest noise source next to the QRPN, is measured and shown to agree with a structural damping model from 200 Hz to 30 kHz. By observing the effects of QRPN in the audio-band, we now have a testbed for studying techniques to mitigate back-action, such as variational readout and squeezed light injection, that could be used to improve the sensitivity of gravitational-wave detectors.