  Ground-state cooling of mechanical motion by coupling to a driven optical
cavity has been demonstrated in various optomechanical systems. In our work, we
provide a so far missing thermodynamic performance analysis of optomechanical
sideband cooling. As performance quantifiers we examine not only the lowest
reachable effective temperature (phonon number), but also the evacuated-heat
flow as an equivalent to the cooling power of a standard refrigerator, as well
as appropriate thermodynamic efficiencies, which all can be experimentally
inferred from measurements of the cavity output light field. Importantly, in
addition to the standard optomechanical setup fed by coherent light, we
investigate two recent alternative setups for achieving ground-state cooling:
replacing the coherent laser drive by squeezed light or using a cavity with a
frequency-dependent (Fano) mirror. We study the dynamics of these setups within
and beyond the weak-coupling limit and give concrete examples based on
parameters of existing experimental systems. By applying our thermodynamic
framework, we gain detailed insights into these three different optomechanical
cooling setups, allowing a comprehensive understanding of the thermodynamic
mechanisms at play.
