Observation of spontaneous Brillouin cooling

Although bolometric- and ponderomotive-induced deflection of device boundaries are widely used for laser cooling, the electrostrictive Brillouin scattering of light from sound was considered an acousto-optical amplification-only process(1-7). It was suggested that cooling could be possible in multi-resonance Brillouin systems(5-8) when phonons experience lower damping than light(8). However, this regime was not accessible in electrostrictive Brillouin systems(1-3,5,6) as backscattering enforces high acoustical frequencies associated with high mechanical damping(1). Recently, forward Brillouin scattering(3) in microcavities(7) has allowed access to low-frequency acoustical modes where mechanical dissipation is lower than optical dissipation, in accordance with the requirements for cooling(8). Here we experimentally demonstrate cooling via such a forward Brillouin process in a microresonator. We show two regimes of operation for the electrostrictive Brillouin process: acoustical amplification as is traditional and an electrostrictive Brillouin cooling regime. Cooling is mediated by resonant light in one pumped optical mode, and spontaneously scattered resonant light in one anti-Stokes optical mode, that beat and electrostrictively attenuate the Brownian motion of the mechanical mode.