  A pulsed cooling scheme for optomechanical systems is presented that is
capable of cooling at much faster rates, shorter overall cooling times, and for
a wider set of experimental scenarios than is possible by conventional methods.
The proposed scheme can be implemented for both strongly and weakly coupled
optomechanical systems in both weakly and highly dissipative cavities. We study
analytically its underlying working mechanism, which is based on
interferometric control of optomechanical interactions, and we demonstrate its
efficiency with pulse sequences that are obtained by using methods from optimal
control. The short time in which our scheme approaches the optomechanical
ground state allows for a significant relaxation of current experimental
constraints. Finally, the framework presented here can be used to create a rich
variety of optomechanical interactions and hence offers a novel, readily
available toolbox for fast optomechanical quantum control.
