Sympathetic laser-cooling of graphene with Casimir-Polder forces

Abstract

We propose a scheme to actively cool the fundamental flexural (out-of-plane) mode of a graphene sheet via vacuum forces. Our setup consists in a cold atom cloud placed close to a graphene sheet at distances of a few micrometers. The atoms couple to the graphene membrane via Casimir-Polder forces. By deriving a self-consistent set of equations governing the dynamics of the atomic gas and the flexural modes of the graphene, we show to be possible to cool graphene from room temperatures by actively (laser) cooling an atomic gas. By choosing the right set of experimental parameter we are able to cool a graphene sheet down to ~ 60 microkelvin.