Quantum control of engineered mechanical oscillators can be achieved bycoupling the oscillator to an auxiliary degree of freedom, provided that thecoherent rate of energy exchange exceeds the decoherence rate of each of thetwo sub-systems. We achieve such quantum-coherent coupling between themechanical and optical modes of a micro-optomechanical system. Simultaneously,the mechanical oscillator is cooled to an average occupancy of n = 1.7 \pm 0.1motional quanta. Pulsed optical excitation reveals the exchange of energybetween the optical light field and the micromechanical oscillator in the timedomain at the level of less than one quantum on average. These results providea route towards the realization of efficient quantum interfaces betweenmechanical oscillators and optical fields.
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