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EPJ Quantum Technology

Phonon blockade via atomic coherence in a hybrid optomechanical system

Jian-Jun Han, Shiyan Li, Nan Wang, Ai‐Dong Zhu, Lin Yu

Published Nov 5, 2025• 2 citations
Publisher

Abstract

A hybrid optomechanical system incorporating a two-level atom is utilized to realize phonon blockade, with the large-detuned optical mode decoupled from the system via adiabatic approximation. This process establishes an exchange interaction between the two-level atom and the mechanical mode. The findings indicate that both conventional and unconventional phonon blockade mechanisms coexist within the system. By tuning the driving frequency of the two-level atom, the system can be dynamically switched between these two mechanisms. The phonon blockade effect exhibits remarkable robustness against optical dissipation due to the adiabatic elimination of the cavity mode, enabling its realization even in low-Q cavities. In this study, the two-level atom serves not only as a critical component for achieving phonon blockade but also as an additional tool for manipulating the blockade mechanism. Our results provide a promising framework for hybrid optomechanical systems aiming to achieve switchable and robust single-phonon sources.

DOI
10.1140/epjqt/s40507-025-00429-z

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A hybrid optomechanical system incorporating a two-level atom is utilized to realize phonon blockade, with the large-detuned optical mode decoupled from the system via adiabatic approximation. This process establishes an exchange interaction between the two-level atom and the mechanical mode. The findings indicate that both conventional and unconventional phonon blockade mechanisms coexist within the system. By tuning the driving frequency of the two-level atom, the system can be dynamically switched between these two mechanisms. The phonon blockade effect exhibits remarkable robustness against optical dissipation due to the adiabatic elimination of the cavity mode, enabling its realization even in low-Q cavities. In this study, the two-level atom serves not only as a critical component for achieving phonon blockade but also as an additional tool for manipulating the blockade mechanism. Our results provide a promising framework for hybrid optomechanical systems aiming to achieve switchable and robust single-phonon sources.
Abstract Phonon statistics in a hybrid optomechanical system, where a mechanical resonator is quadratically coupled to a cavity and couples with another resonator via Coulomb interaction is studied. It is found that the conventional and unconventional phonon blockade can be both achieved at the same parameter regime, which is confirmed by analytical and numerical results. By analyzing the energy level structure, it is found that the anharmonicity of the system is the joint action of both the Coulomb interaction and the optomechanical coupling, where the nonlinearity introduced by the latter has a more significant effect on one branch of the conventional phonon blockade. In addition, the phonon blockade can be enhanced by introducing the mechanical parametric amplifier with optimal parameters, where the physical mechanism underlying comes from the multi‐pathway destructive interference. It is found that the phonon blockade is fragile toward thermal noise due to the weak quantum interference, which can be overcome by increasing the driving strength and applying the mechanical parametric amplifier with suitable parameters. This work may provide a way to manipulate the phonon blockade and can be helpful to the application of quantum information processing.
Phonon nonlinearities play an important role in hybrid quantum networks and on-chip quantum devices. We investigate the phonon statistics of a mechanical oscillator in hybrid systems composed of an atom and one or two standard optomechanical cavities. An efficiently enhanced atom-phonon interaction can be derived via a tripartite atom-photon-phonon interaction, where the atom-photon coupling depends on the mechanical displacement without practically changing a cavity frequency. This novel mechanism of optomechanical interactions, as predicted recently by Cotrufo et al. [Phys. Rev. Lett.118, 133603 (2017)10.1103/PhysRevLett.118.133603], is fundamentally different from standard ones. In the enhanced atom-phonon coupling, the strong phonon nonlinearity at a single-excitation level is obtained in the originally weak-coupling regime, which leads to the appearance of phonon blockade. Moreover, the optimal parameter regimes are presented both for the cases of one and two cavities. We compared phonon-number correlation functions of different orders for mechanical steady states generated in the one-cavity hybrid system, revealing the occurrence of phonon-induced tunneling and different types of phonon blockade. Our approach offers an alternative method to generate and control a single phonon in the quantum regime and could have potential applications in single-phonon quantum technologies.
Phonon nonlinearities play an important role in hybrid quantum networks and on-chip quantum devices. We investigate the phonon statistics of a mechanical oscillator in hybrid systems composed of an atom and one or two standard optomechanical cavities. An efficiently enhanced atom-phonon interaction can be derived via a tripartite atom-photon-phonon interaction, where the atom-photon coupling depends on the mechanical displacement without practically changing a cavity frequency. This novel mechanism of optomechanical interactions, as predicted recently by Cotrufo et al. [Phys. Rev. Lett. 118, 133603 (2017)], is fundamentally different from standard ones. In the enhanced atom-phonon coupling, the strong phonon nonlinearity at a single-excitation level is obtained in the originally weak-coupling regime, which leads to the appearance of phonon blockade. Moreover, the optimal parameter regimes are presented both for the cases of one- and two- cavities. We compared phonon-number correlation functions of different orders for mechanical steady states generated in the one-cavity hybrid system, revealing the occurrence of phonon-induced tunneling and different types of phonon blockade. Our approach offers an alternative method to generate and control a single phonon in the quantum regime, and has potential applications in single-phonon quantum technologies.
The research article studies the unconventional photon blockade effect in a hybrid optomechanical system with an embedded spin-triplet state. The interaction between the optomechanical system and the spin state generates new transition paths for the destructive quantum interference of the two-photon excitation state. By analytically solving the Schrodinger equation and numerically simulating the master equation, it can be found that the modulated mechanical dissipation is essential for achieving the strong photon blockade in our system. Unlike the conventional cavity optomechanical system, the second-order correlation function g(2)(0) =0 can be obtained with the weak single-photon optomechanical coupling. By adjusting the system parameters, the strong photon blockade and the single-photon resonance can coincide, which indicates the hybrid system has the potential to be a high-quality and efficient single-photon source. Finally, the influence of the thermal noise on photon blockade is investigated. The results show that the second-order correlation function is more robust for the weaker phonon-spin coupling.
A scheme of nonreciprocal conventional phonon blockade (PB) is proposed in a spinning optomechanical resonator coupled with a two-level atom. The coherent coupling between the atom and breathing mode is mediated by the optical mode with a large detuning. Due to the Fizeau shift caused by the spinning resonator, the PB can be implemented in a nonreciprocal way. Specifically, when the spinning resonator is driven from one direction, the single-phonon (1PB) and two-phonon blockade (2PB) can be achieved by adjusting both the amplitude and frequency of the mechanical drive field, while phonon-induced tunneling (PIT) occurs when the spinning resonator is driven from the opposite direction. The PB effects are insensitive to cavity decay because of the adiabatic elimination of the optical mode, thus making the scheme more robust to the optical noise and still feasible even in a low-Q cavity. Our scheme provides a flexible method for engineering a unidirectional phonon source with external control, which is expected to be used as a chiral quantum device in quantum computing networks.
We propose a scheme to realize the two-phonon blockade effect in a quadratically coupled optomechanical system. We consider the case that the optical cavity is simultaneously driven by a strong pumping field and a weak driving field. By strongly driving the optical cavity, the nonlinear interaction between the optical mode and the mechanical resonator can be significantly enhanced and an effective second-order nonlinearity between photons and phonons is induced. Based on this effectively strong nonlinearity, the two-phonon blockade effect can be achieved when a weak driving field is applied into the optical cavity. By contrast, we study the case of weakly driving the mechanical resonator. In this case, the single-phonon blockade is generated, while the two-phonon blockade cannot be observed. By numerically calculating the second-order and third-order correlation function, we investigate the statistical characteristics of phonons. In addition, we also study the influence of the thermal noise on the achieved two-phonon blockade effect. Our work provides an alternative approach for implementing multiphonon blockade and has potential applications in quantum information processing.