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Physical Review A

Macroscopic superposition states of a mechanical oscillator in an optomechanical system with quadratic coupling

Hong Xie, Xiao Shang, Chang-Geng Liao, Zhihua Chen, Xiu‐Min Lin

Published Sep 4, 2019• 24 citations
Publisher

Abstract

We present a proposal to prepare the macroscopic superposition states of a mechanical oscillator in an optomechanical system with quadratic coupling. By coherently driving the optomechanical cavity with an external field, a Kerr-type interaction among phonons is induced. The macroscopic mechanical superposition can be generated by exploiting the Kerr nonlinearity in the mechanical oscillator, just as the generation of a nonclassical state of light in a Kerr medium. One merit of our proposal is that the Kerr nonlinearity can be strongly enhanced by adjusting the amplitude of the driving field. The influence of the system damping on the realization of mechanical non-Gaussian state is discussed by the negativity of the Wigner function. The results show that the macroscopic superposition states are robust against the mechanical thermal noise.

DOI
10.1103/physreva.100.033803

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We present a proposal to prepare the macroscopic superposition states of a mechanical oscillator in an optomechanical system with quadratic coupling. By coherently driving the optomechanical cavity with an external field, a Kerr-type interaction among phonons is induced. The macroscopic mechanical superposition can be generated by exploiting the Kerr nonlinearity in the mechanical oscillator, just as the generation of a nonclassical state of light in a Kerr medium. One merit of our proposal is that the Kerr nonlinearity can be strongly enhanced by adjusting the amplitude of the driving field. The influence of the system damping on the realization of mechanical non-Gaussian state is discussed by the negativity of the Wigner function. The results show that the macroscopic superposition states are robust against the mechanical thermal noise.
We study an optomechanical system for the purpose of generating a nonclassical mechanical state when a mechanical oscillator is quadratically coupled to a single-mode cavity field driven by a squeezed optical field. The system corresponds to a regime where the optical dissipation dominates both the mechanical damping and the optomechanical coupling. We identify that multiphonon processes emerge in the optomechanical system and show that a mechanical oscillator prepared in the ground state will evolve into an amplitude-squared squeezed vacuum state. The Wigner distribution of the steady state of the mechanical oscillator is non-Gaussian exhibiting quantum interference and fourfold symmetry. This nonclassical mechanical state, generated via reservoir engineering, can be used for quantum correlation measurements of the position and momentum of the mechanics below the standard quantum limit.
Macroscopic quantum superposition states are fundamental to test the classical-quantum boundary and present suitable candidates for quantum technologies. Although the preparation of such states has already been realized, the existing setups commonly consider external driving and resonant interactions, predominantly by considering Jaynes-Cummings-like and beam-splitter-like interactions, as well as the nonlinear radiation pressure interaction in cavity optomechanics. In contrast to previous works on the matter, we propose a feasible probabilistic scheme to generate a macroscopic mechanical qubit, as well as phononic Schr\"odinger's cat states with no need of any energy exchange with the macroscopic mechanical oscillator. Essentially, we investigate an open dispersive spin-mechanical system in the absence of any external driving under nonideal conditions, such as the detrimental effects due to the oscillator and spin energy losses in a thermal bath at nonzero temperature. In our work, we show that the procedure to generate the mechanical qubit state is solely based on spin postselection in the weak to moderate coupling regime. Finally, we demonstrate that the mechanical superposition is related to the amplification of the mean values of the mechanical quadratures as they maximize the quantum coherence.
In this paper, we propose a scheme for deterministically preparing a quantum superposition $|{\ensuremath{\psi}}_{s}{\ensuremath{\rangle}}_{b}={C}_{0}{|0\ensuremath{\rangle}}_{b}+{C}_{\mathcal{N}}{|\mathcal{N}\ensuremath{\rangle}}_{b}$ between vacuum and an arbitrary Fock state ${|\mathcal{N}\ensuremath{\rangle}}_{b}$ of mechanical oscillators via strong single-photon optomechanical coupling. We consider an optomechanical cavity which contains a Kerr medium and is driven by two lasers, with one laser tuned to the cavity resonance and the other to the N\mathcal{N}Nth lower sideband of the cavity. The amplitudes C0{C}_{0}C0​ and CN{C}_{\mathcal{N}}CN​ are determined only by the drive strengths in the absence of mechanical damping and the approximate Fock state $|{\ensuremath{\psi}}_{s}{\ensuremath{\rangle}}_{b}\ensuremath{\approx}{|\mathcal{N}\ensuremath{\rangle}}_{b}$ can be obtained with appropriate relative strengths of the lasers. It is revealed that the superposition results from destructive quantum interference. The analytical results are confirmed by exact numerical calculation, and it is also shown that the nonclassical state is robust against thermal mechanical noise.
In this paper we propose a scheme for the generation of a nonclassical non-Gaussian motional state of a mechanical resonator (MR) in the three-mode optomechanical system in which two linearly coupled single-mode cavities interact dispersively with the mechanical oscillator simultaneously. With one cavity driven by a weak laser field and by properly tuning the driving frequency, a desirable phononic Liouvillian superoperator can be obtained by engineering the selective interaction Hamiltonian confined to Fock subspaces. It is shown that the MR can be driven dissipatively into a steady non-Gaussian nonclassical state, which possesses sub-Poisson statistics, although its Wigner function is positive. The present scheme can be useful for obtaining single phonons.
Quantum control of phonons has become a focus of attention for developing quantum technologies. Here, we present a proposal to realize phonon blockade in a quadratically coupled optomechanical system, where a strong nonlinear interaction between photons and phonons can be induced by an external field coherently driving the cavity and the effective coupling strength is tunable by adjusting the amplitude of the driving field. This optically induced nonlinearity is different from standard methods for the realization of phonon blockade, where the nonlinearity is achieved by coupling the mechanical system to superconducting qubits. We both analytically and numerically study the phonon statistical properties via the steady-state solution of the second-order correlation function and find phonon blockade can be efficiently realized for a large cooperativity of the system, which is achievable based on the optically enhanced nonlinear coupling and high quality mechanical system.
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.