Self-cooling of a micro-mirror by radiation pressure

We demonstrate passive feedback cooling of a mechanical resonator based on radiation pressure forces and assisted by photothermal forces in a high-finesse optical cavity. The resonator is a free-standing high-reflectance micro-mirror (of mass m=400ng and mechanical quality factor Q=10^4) that is used as back-mirror in a detuned Fabry-Perot cavity of optical finesse F=500. We observe an increased damping in the dynamics of the mechanical oscillator by a factor of 30 and a corresponding cooling of the oscillator modes below 10 K starting from room temperature. This effect is an important ingredient for recently proposed schemes to prepare quantum entanglement of macroscopic mechanical oscillators.