In the late 1960s and early 1970s, the development of mechanical resonators was pushed forward in efforts to record gravitational waves. In order to push down the limit of the smallest detectable force, the radiation circulating in a Fabry-Perot cavity was demonstrated to modify the damping of the cavity end-mirror suspended to act as a mechanical resonator. A few years later, motivated by the study of the internal properties of atoms and ions, the radiation pressure of light was realized as a means to cool atomic motion. In the following years, the ground-state cooling of ion motion was achieved in landmark studies. For mechanical resonators parametrically coupled to Fabry-Perot cavities, it took much longer to reach quantum ground-state cooling, both in the microwave domain, where the original experiments took place, and in the optical domain. Ground-state cooling in both regimes was reached by three groups during the preparation of this thesis and was largely due to advancements in the fabrication methods. \n \nGround-state cooling allows, in principle, the quantum nature of mechanical resonators to be probed and harnessed. Microwave domain devices, which are focused on in this thesis, have the advantage that nonlinear elements (superconducting quantum bits, qubits) are readily available. These elements enable nonclassical state preparation of the qubit and the subsequent transfer to the microwave cavity. The goal is to transfer these quantum states to mechanical resonators. This would allow mechanics to be used as a quantum mechanical memory in quantum information processing thanks to their long lifetimes. \n \nIn this thesis, various aspects of microwave domain circuit optomechanics are studied. The main goal of this thesis is to study how to enhance the coupling between a quantum regime microwave device and a mechanical resonator by using Josephson junction –based qubits. Coherent interaction between a superconducting qubit and a classical driven mechanical field is demonstrated. The analysis presented in this thesis predicts that ground-state cooling and coherent state transfer is possible in the single-phonon regime with transmon-regime qubits. Also, traditional linear optomechanical systems are considered in which the mechanical resonator is coupled to an electrical resonator. Such systems exhibit a rich spectrum of phenomena from which the quantum-limited amplification and multimode effects are considered in this thesis. It is shown that the system operates near quantum-limited amplification, which could be reached if the mechanical resonator was in the ground state.
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.
ABSTRACT Ground‐state cooling of mechanical resonators in cavity magnomechanical (CMM) systems is critical for quantum technologies, but is fundamentally limited by intrinsically weak magnon–phonon coupling. Conventional strong‐driving‐based coupling amplification introduces excess quantum noise, while pioneering squeezing‐assisted CMM cooling schemes rely on strong driving, using squeezing to suppress heating noise, leaving the weak‐coupling bottleneck unaddressed. Here, we propose a scheme using magnon squeezing as the core mechanism to enhance effective magnon–phonon coupling via tuning squeezing strength and phase, eliminating the need for intrinsic coupling enhancement or excessively strong driving beyond the linearization regime. Theoretical analysis shows that a red‐detuned squeezed magnon mode markedly boosts the net cooling rate, enabling ground‐state cooling at higher bath temperatures, with performance further optimized by reducing magnon dissipation. This approach amplifies magnomechanical coupling while avoiding detrimental strong‐driving effects, providing a practical, low‐noise route to efficient quantum cooling in CMM systems.