Optomechanically induced transparency and cooling in thermally stable diamond microcavities

Abstract: Diamond cavity optomechanical devices hold great promise for quantum technology based on coherent coupling between photons, phonons and spins. These devices benefit from the exceptional physical properties of diamond, including its low mechanical dissipation and optical absorption. However the nanoscale dimensions and mechanical isolation of these devices can make them susceptible to thermo-optic instability when operating at the high intracavity field strengths needed to realize coherent photon--phonon coupling. In this work, we overcome these effects through engineering of the device geometry, enabling operation with large photon numbers in a previously thermally unstable regime of red-detuning. We demonstrate optomechanically induced transparency with cooperativity > 1 and normal mode cooling from 300 K to 60 K, and predict that these device will enable coherent optomechanical manipulation of diamond spin systems.