Advances in optomechanics

I present a recapitulation of several advances in the design of SiN membrane resonators for use in optomechanical systems. The concomitant improvement in Q-factors has allowed two recent experiments to cool a vibrational mode of such a membrane close to its quantum ground state starting from room temperature, as well as to demonstrate that an optomechanical system comprising it can serve as a long-lived and efficient quantum memory for single photons.