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arXiv:2512.10347 · Quantum Review Letters

Generation of mechanical cat-like states via optomagnomechanics

Hao-Tian Li, Hong-Bin Wang, Zi-Xu Lu, Jie Li

quant-phcond-mat.mes-hallphysics.opticsSubmitted Dec 11, 2025• Announced Dec 12, 2025• 0 citations
v1 · Dec 11, 2025v2 · Feb 6, 2026
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Abstract

We propose an optomagnomechanical approach for preparing a cat-like superposition state of mechanical motion. Our protocol consists of two steps and is based on the magnomechanical system where the magnetostrictively induced displacement further couples to an optical cavity mode via radiation pressure. We first prepare a squeezed mechanical state by driving the magnomechanical system with a two-tone microwave field. We then switch off the microwave drives and send a weak red-detuned optical pulse to the optical cavity to weakly activate the optomechanical anti-Stokes scattering. We show that $k$ phonons can be subtracted from the prepared squeezed state, conditioned on the detection of $k$ anti-Stokes photons from the cavity output field, which prepares the mechanical motion in a cat-like state. The work provides a new avenue for preparing mechanical superposition states by combining opto- and magnomechanics and may find applications in the study of macroscopic quantum states and the test of collapse theories.

Journal reference
Quantum Review Letters 2, 35 (2026)
DOI
10.1016/j.qrl.2026.03.001
Comments
Invited contribution to Quantum Review Letters

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Abstract We show how to prepare a steady-state entangled state between magnons and optical photons in an opto-magnomechanical configuration, where a mechanical vibration mode couples to a magnon mode in a ferrimagnet by the dispersive magnetostrictive interaction, and to an optical cavity by the radiation pressure. We find that, by appropriately driving the magnon mode and the cavity to simultaneously activate the magnomechanical Stokes and the optomechanical anti-Stokes scattering, a stationary optomagnonic entangled state can be created. We further show that, by activating the magnomechanical state–swap interaction and subsequently sending a weak red-detuned optical pulse to drive the cavity, the magnonic state can be read out in the cavity output field of the pulse via the mechanical transduction. The demonstrated entanglement and state-readout protocols in such a novel opto-magnomechanical configuration allow us to optically control, prepare, and read out quantum states of collective spin excitations in solids, and provide promising opportunities for the study of quantum magnonics, macroscopic quantum states, and magnonic quantum information processing.
We propose a scheme to prepare a macroscopic mechanical oscillator in a catlike state, close to a coherent state superposition. The mechanical oscillator, coupled by radiation-pressure interaction to a field in an optical cavity, is first prepared close to a squeezed vacuum state using a reservoir engineering technique. The system is then probed using a short optical pulse tuned to the lower motional sideband of the cavity resonance, realizing a photon-phonon swap interaction. A photon number measurement of the photons emerging from the cavity then conditions a phonon-subtracted catlike state with a negative Wigner distribution exhibiting separated peaks and multiple interference fringes. We show that this scheme is feasible using state-of-the-art photonic crystal optomechanical system.
We show how to prepare macroscopic entanglement between an atomic ensemble and a large number of magnons in a ferrimagnetic yttrium-iron-garnet crystal. Specifically, we adopt an optomagnomechanical configuration where the magnetostriction-induced magnomechanical displacement couples to an optical cavity via radiation pressure, and the latter further couples to an ensemble of two-level atoms that are placed inside the cavity. We show that, by properly driving the cavity and magnon modes, optomechanical entanglement is created which is further distributed to the atomic and magnonic systems, yielding stationary entanglement between atoms and magnons. The atom-magnon entanglement is a result of the combined effect of opto- and magnomechanical cooling and optomechanical parametric down-conversion interactions. A competition mechanism between two mechanical cooling channels is revealed. We further show that genuine tripartite entanglement of three massive subsystems, i.e., atoms, magnons, and phonons, can also be achieved in the same system. Our results indicate that the hybrid optomagnomechanical system may become a promising system for preparing macroscopic quantum states involving magnons, photons, phonons, and atoms.
In this paper, we propose a feasible scheme for generating the Schr\"odinger-cat-like states of a macroscopic mechanical resonator in pulsed cavity optomechanics via photon detection. Starting with cooling the mechanical oscillator to its ground state, a red pulse and a blue pulse with different powers are simultaneously employed to dissipatively generate squeezed mechanical states. Subsequently, a second red pulse is utilized to achieve large-amplitude mechanical catlike states with high fidelities, conditioned on the multiphoton detection of cavity output and assisted by squeezing injection into the cavity. This combination effectively overcomes the difficulty that only a kitten can be produced by single-photon detection. Finally, after being stored in the resonator for a period of time during which thermal effect is analytically revealed, the mechanical quantum superpositions are mapped, with a third red pulse, to the cavity output field for state verification. Our scheme is generic and can also be used to produce other kinds of non-Gaussian mechanical states, such as optical-catalysis nonclassical states.
We propose schemes for generating quantum squeezing and enhancing entanglement in an opto-magnomechanical configuration by periodically modulating the driving field. The system consists of an optical cavity and a ferrimagnetic yttrium-iron-garnet micro-bridge supporting a magnon mode and a mechanical vibration mode, in which the mechanical mode couples to the optical mode and the magnon mode via radiation pressure and magnetostrictive interaction, respectively. The optical mode and the magnon mode are driven by classical fields, and the amplitude of the laser field driving the optical cavity is periodically modulated. We find that when the classical fields are red-detuned and their anti-Stokes sidebands scattered by the mechanical motion resonate with the corresponding driven modes, all the modes in the system will be squeezed simultaneously, and the mechanical squeezing can exceed the 3-dB limit. Furthermore, when the driving laser field is red-detuned and the microwave field is blue-detuned, both the bipartite and tripartite entanglements will be generated, and compared to the case without periodical modulation, the entanglements are significantly enhanced. We also show that the schemes have strong robustness against the system dissipations and environmental temperature. Our schemes may provide efficient quantum resources for quantum precision measurement and quantum information processing.
The ability to prepare a macroscopic mechanical resonator into a quantum superposition state is an outstanding goal of cavity optomechanics. Here, we propose a technique to generate cat states of motion using the intrinsic nonlinearity of a dispersive optomechanical interaction. By applying a bichromatic drive to an optomechanical cavity, our protocol enhances the inherent second-order processes of the system, inducing the requisite two-phonon dissipation. We show that this nonlinear sideband cooling technique can dissipatively engineer a mechanical resonator into a cat state, which we verify using the full Hamiltonian and an adiabatically reduced model. While the fidelity of the cat state is maximized in the single-photon, strong-coupling regime, we demonstrate that Wigner negativity persists even for weak coupling. Finally, we show that our cat state generation protocol is robust to significant thermal decoherence of the mechanical mode, indicating that such a procedure may be feasible for near-term experimental systems.