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Physical Review A

Correlation measurement of few-phonon interference

Yu Wang, Yan‐Lei Zhang, Zhen Shen, Hong-Yi Kuang, Chang‐Ling Zou, Hui Jing, Yun‐Feng Xiao, Guang‐Can Guo, Chun‐Hua Dong

Published Mar 21, 2024• 2 citations
Publisher

Abstract

The interferometer is a vital technology in achieving coherent control and measurement in quantum systems. In this study, we present a few-phonon interferometer based on an optomechanical crystal cavity, which is cooled down with several phonons even less. Through the phonon counting, the competition between the thermal and coherent phonons is demonstrated by the interference. The interference visibility is monotonically increased with increasing the coherent phonons. However, the interference on second-order correlation ${g}^{(2)}(0)$ occurs in reverse because of the different statistical properties of thermal and coherent phonons, which also leads to an unnatural interference visibility with great coherent phonons. The investigation of this correlation interference technology will advance the development of cavity optomechanics systems in the quantum precision sensing and quantum information processing fields.

DOI
10.1103/physreva.109.033523

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The interferometer is a vital technology in achieving coherent control and measurement in quantum systems. In this study, we present a few-phonon interferometer based on an optomechanical crystal cavity, which is cooled down with several phonons even less. Through the phonon counting, the competition between the thermal and coherent phonons is demonstrated by the interference. The interference visibility is monotonically increased with increasing the coherent phonons. However, the interference on second-order correlation g(2)(0){g}^{(2)}(0)g(2)(0) occurs in reverse because of the different statistical properties of thermal and coherent phonons, which also leads to an unnatural interference visibility with great coherent phonons. The investigation of this correlation interference technology will advance the development of cavity optomechanics systems in the quantum precision sensing and quantum information processing fields.
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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.
Abstract We study the cross-correlation between two bosonic modes of a two-mode displaced squeezed thermal state. By calculating the equal-time second-order cross-correlation function, we find that strong anticorrelation between the two bosonic modes can be observed. The mechanism of anticorrelation between the two bosonic modes is the interference between two coherent displacements and a squeeze operation. The optimal values of the two displacements and the squeezing parameter for achieving the minimum value of g ab ( 2 ) ( 0 ) is derived. As an example, we explore the anticorrelation between phonons in a three-mode optomechanical system where two mechanical oscillators are coupled to a single cavity mode. The two-mode displaced squeezed thermal state of the two mechanical oscillators can be achieved if the squeezing amplitude and the mean phonon occupation number of the two mechanical environments are not very large. Furthermore, we find that the two-time second-order correlation function has multiple minima if the frequency difference of the two mechanical oscillators is large. Our results provide us with a tool to generate anticorrelated photons and phonons which may have potential applications in quantum information networks.
We report the observation of a counterintuitive phenomenon in multipath correlation interferometry with thermal light. The intensity correlation between the outputs of two unbalanced Mach-Zehnder interferometers (UMZIs) with two classically correlated beams of thermal light at the input exhibits genuine second-order interference with the visibility of 1/3. Surprisingly, the second-order interference does not degrade at all no matter how much the path length difference in each UMZI is increased beyond the coherence length of the thermal light. Moreover, the second-order interference is dependent on the difference of the UMZI phases. These results differ substantially from those of the entangled-photon Franson interferometer, which exhibits two-photon interference dependent on the sum of the UMZI phases and the interference vanishes as the path length difference in each UMZI exceeds the coherence length of the pump laser. Our work offers deeper insight into the interplay between interference and coherence in multiphoton interferometry.
We report observation of a counter-intuitive phenomenon in multi-path correlation interferometry with thermal light. The intensity correlation between the outputs of two unbalanced Mach-Zehnder interferometers (UMZI) with two classically correlated beams of thermal light at the input exhibits genuine second-order interference with the visibility of 1/3. Surprisingly, the second-order interference does not degrade at all no matter how much the path length difference in each UMZI is increased beyond the coherence length of the thermal light. Moreover, the second-order interference is dependent on the difference of the UMZI phases. These results differ substantially from those of the entangled-photon Franson interferometer which exhibits two-photon interference dependent on the sum of the UMZI phases and the interference vanishes as the path length difference in each UMZI exceeds the coherence length of the pump laser. Our work offers deeper insight into the interplay between interference and coherence in multi-photon interferometry.
We report the observation of a counterintuitive phenomenon in multipath correlation interferometry with thermal light. The intensity correlation between the outputs of two unbalanced Mach-Zehnder interfer- ometers (UMZIs) with two classically correlated beams of thermal light at the input exhibits genuine second-order interference with the visibility of 1=3. Surprisingly, the second-order interference does not degrade at all no matter how much the path length difference in each UMZI is increased beyond the coherence length of the thermal light. Moreover, the second-order interference is dependent on the difference of the UMZI phases. These results differ substantially from those of the entangled-photon Franson interferometer, which exhibits two-photon interference dependent on the sum of the UMZI phases and the interference vanishes as the path length difference in each UMZI exceeds the coherence length of the pump laser. Our work offers deeper insight into the interplay between interference and coherence in multiphoton interferometry.