Quantum noise in photothermal cooling

We study the problem of cooling a mechanical oscillator using the photothermal (bolometric) force. Contrary to previous attempts to model this system, we take into account the noise effects due to the granular nature of photon absorption. We achieve this by developing a Langevin formalism for the motion of the cantilever, valid in the bad-cavity limit, which includes both photon absorption shot noise and the noise due to radiation pressure. This allows us to tackle the cooling problem down to the noise-dominated regime and to find reasonable estimates for the lowest achievable phonon occupation in the cantilever.