Entanglement between optical fields and microwave signals can be used as a quantum optical sensing technique to detect received microwave signals from a low-reflecting object which is encompassed by a bright thermal environment. Here, we introduce and analyze an optomechanical system for detecting weak reflected microwave signals from an object of low reflectivity. In our system, coupling and consequently entanglement between microwave and optical photons are achieved by means of a plasmonic wave. The main problem that can be moderated in the field of quantum optical sensing of weak microwave signals is suppressing the destructive effect of high temperatures on the entanglement between microwave signals and optical photons. For this purpose, we will show that our system can perform at high temperatures as well as low ones. It will be shown that the presence of the plasmonic wave can reduce the destructive effect of the thermal noises on the entanglement between microwave and optical photons. Also, we will show that the optomechanical interaction is vital to create an appropriate entanglement between microwave and optical photons.
We theoretically investigate the steady-state bipartite entanglements, mechanical ground-state cooling, and mechanical quadrature squeezing in a hybrid electro-optomechanical system where a moving membrane is linearly coupled to the microwave field mode of an LC circuit, while it simultaneously interacts both linearly and quadratically with the radiation pressure of a single-mode optical cavity. We show that by choosing a suitable sign and amplitude for the quadratic optomechanical coupling (QOC), one can achieve enhanced and thermally robust stationary bipartite entanglement between the subsystems, improved mechanical ground-state cooling, and
Q-quadrature squeezing of the mechanical mode beyond the 3-dB limit of squeezing. In particular, we find that in the presence of QOC with negative sign and in the resolved sideband regime the bipartite optical-mechanical entanglement can be increased by about 2 orders of magnitude around the temperature of 1 mK, and it can be preserved against thermal noise up to the ambient temperature of 0.1 K. Furthermore, the QOC with positive sign can give rise to the enhancement of the mechanical ground-state cooling by about 1 order of magnitude in the optical and microwave red-detuned regime. We also find that for the positive sign of QOC and near the microwave resonance frequency the squeezing degree of the
Q quadrature of the mechanical mode can be amplified up to 15 dB. Such a hybrid electro-optomechanical system can serve as a promising platform to engineer an improved entangled source for quantum sensing as well as quantum information processing.
We propose a scheme to generate one-way steering, bipartite, and genuine tripartite entanglement in a five-mode hybrid cavity electro-optomechanical system consisted of an optical cavity, a mechanical resonator, and three microwave cavity modes with the help of a squeezed vacuum field. The optical cavity is pumped by a squeezed vacuum field. The mechanical resonator is formed by a freely vibrating silicon nitride membrane, which is a part of a capacitor in an inductor–capacitor circuit forming three microwave resonators. We find that there is robust entanglement and one-way steering between the optical cavity mode and microwave cavity modes in the presence of the squeezed vacuum field. Particularly, there is steady-state genuine tripartite entanglement between three microwave cavity modes, which is robust against thermal fluctuations. Our scheme could be useful for various quantum tasks based on hybrid electro-optomechanical systems fabricated on chips.