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IEEE photonics journal

Quantum Dynamics of Bosonic Squeezing Under Multi-Tone Driving in an Optomechanical System

Xiao-Fei Liu, Tie-Jun Wang, Chuan Xi Wang

Published Nov 14, 2025• 0 citations
Publisher

Abstract

The squeezing of a mechanical mode can break through the “standard quantum limit”, which has significant applications in high-precision measurement. In this paper, we employ a full quantum stochastic method to investigate the dynamics of an optomechanical system under multi-tone driving. Previous method usually sets the classical mean value as a constant. For the dynamic process, this mean value should be time dependent, especially under the multi-tone driving. Here, we use the full quantum stochastic method, and we find that the mechanical squeezing exhibits nonmonotonic behavior with the enhancement of blue-sideband driving, which declines after reaching its maximum value; meanwhile, this system requires a longer time to evolve into a steady state. Moreover, the nonmonotonic trend of squeezing can also be observed by enhancing the strengths of both red- and blue-sideband driving simultaneously, and a shorter time is required to reach the steady state. This work provides valuable insights into the dynamics of an optomechanical system under multi-tone driving for the first time, which is of significant importance for improving the sensitivity of quantum precision measurement.

DOI
10.1109/jphot.2025.3632666

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The squeezing of a mechanical mode can break through the “standard quantum limit”, which has significant applications in high-precision measurement. In this paper, we employ a full quantum stochastic method to investigate the dynamics of an optomechanical system under multi-tone driving. Previous method usually sets the classical mean value as a constant. For the dynamic process, this mean value should be time dependent, especially under the multi-tone driving. Here, we use the full quantum stochastic method, and we find that the mechanical squeezing exhibits nonmonotonic behavior with the enhancement of blue-sideband driving, which declines after reaching its maximum value; meanwhile, this system requires a longer time to evolve into a steady state. Moreover, the nonmonotonic trend of squeezing can also be observed by enhancing the strengths of both red- and blue-sideband driving simultaneously, and a shorter time is required to reach the steady state. This work provides valuable insights into the dynamics of an optomechanical system under multi-tone driving for the first time, which is of significant importance for improving the sensitivity of quantum precision measurement.
Among the various nanoscale systems operating in the quantum limit, nanomechanical oscillators have emerged as particularly powerful platforms. They constitute highly sensitive sensors and can mediate interactions between light and localized quantum systems, playing a central role in various quantum information processing architectures. Due to their relatively large mass, they also serve as ideal platforms for investigating the transition between classical and quantum behavior. This thesis examines the dynamics of a nanomechanical oscillator coupled to a driven two-level system. The analysis focuses on the resolved sideband limit, where the twolevel system’s damping rate Γ is much smaller than the mechanical frequency ωm, and explores both the strong coupling (ωm ≫ g0 ≫ Γ) and ultra-strong coupling (g0 ∼ ωm ≫ Γ) regimes, where g0 denotes the coupling strength. These regimes enable coherent manipulation of the mechanical state while preserving its quantum coherence. Under blue-detuned driving of the two-level system and assuming low mechanical damping, the system exhibits a dynamical instability marked by the emergence of limit cycles in the mechanical oscillator. The onset of this regime is accompanied by pronounced fluctuations in the photon emission from the two-level system, indicated by a large deviation from Poissonian statistics. The phonon statistics display a similar behavior, offering an additional experimental signature. As the coupling strength approaches ωm, the mechanical oscillator reaches a steady state with non-classical feature. The phonon number distribution in this regime resembles that of Fock states, and the corresponding quasi-probability distribution in phase space displays negative regions, a signature of nonclassicality. A method is proposed to detect this non-classicality experimentally through measurements of the emitted light, from which the full quantum state of the coupled system can be reconstructed. The robustness of this approach is analyzed in the presence of realistic noise sources. The thesis further investigates the response of the system under two-tone driving. A tailored model is developed to describe this regime at strong coupling. When the driving frequencies are tuned to the first blue and red sidebands, the mechanical oscillator reaches a steady state exhibiting quadrature squeezing. In the case where both driving frequencies are red-detuned, the oscillator evolves into a superposition of coherent states, analogous to the behavior of a parametrically driven resonator. In both configurations, non-classical features become prominent when g0 approaches ωm. These results provide new insights into the generation and stabilization of non-classical and squeezed mechanical states. We outline feasible strategies for their detection, offering potential applications in hybrid quantum systems and foundational tests of quantum mechanics.
Backaction-evading measurements of mechanical motion can achieve precision below the zero-point uncertainty and quantum squeezing, which makes them a resource for quantum metrology and quantum information processing. We provide an exact expression for the conditional state of an optomechanical system in a two-tone backaction-evading measurement beyond the standard adiabatic approximation and perform extensive numerical simulations to go beyond the usual rotating-wave approximation. We predict the simultaneous presence of conditional mechanical squeezing, intracavity squeezing, and optomechanical entanglement. We further apply an analogous analysis to the multimode optomechanical system of two mechanical and one cavity mode and find conditional mechanical Einstein-Podolski-Rosen entanglement and genuinely tripartite optomechanical entanglement. Our analysis is of direct relevance for ultrasensitive measurements and measurement-based control in high-cooperativity optomechanical sensors operating beyond the adiabatic limit.
Quantum squeezing plays a crucial role in enhancing the precision of quantum metrology and improving the efficiency of quantum information processing protocols. We thus propose a scheme to amplify two-mode squeezing in nanomechanical resonators, harnessing parametric amplification and two-tone laser controls. The red-detuned laser drives facilitate the cooling of the nanomechanical resonators down to their ground state and allow optimal quantum state transfer in the weak-coupling, resolved sideband regime. In particular, the competing blue-detuned lasers in the driving pairs induce displacement squeezing in mechanical resonators. Thus, the quantum state transfer of the squeezing in nanomechanical resonators and the intracavity correlated photons of the parametric amplifier significantly enhance the two-mode mechanical squeezing. Notably, increasing the coupling strength of the red detuned laser and the ratio of blue-to-red detuned laser dramatically amplifies the two-mode mechanical squeezing under realistic experiment parameters of a typical optomechanical system. Our findings reveal that the proposed cooperative mechanism effectively enhances the level of two-mode mechanical squeezing with a considerable improvement and demonstrates exceptional resilience to thermal noise.
A scheme to achieve strong quantum squeezing of a mechanical resonator in a membrane-in-the-middle optomechanical system is developed. To this end, simultaneous linear and nonlinear coupling between the mechanical resonator and the cavity modes is applied. A two-tone driving light field, comprising unequal red-detuned and blue-detuned sidebands, helps in generating a coherent feedback force through the linear coupling with the membrane resonator. Another driving light field with its amplitude modulated at twice the mechanical frequency drives the mechanical parametric amplification through a second-order coupling with the resonator. The combined effect produces strong quantum squeezing of the mechanical state. The proposed scheme is quite robust to excess second-order coupling observed in coherent feedback operations and can suppress the fluctuations in the mechanical quadrature to far below the zero point and achieve strong squeezing (greater than 10 dB) for realistic parameters.
We use a reservoir engineering technique based on two-tone driving to generate and stabilize a quantum squeezed state of a micron-scale mechanical oscillator in a microwave optomechanical system. Using an independent backaction-evading measurement to directly quantify the squeezing, we observe 4.7±0.9 dB of squeezing below the zero-point level surpassing the 3 dB limit of standard parametric squeezing techniques. Our measurements also reveal evidence for an additional mechanical parametric effect. The interplay between this effect and the optomechanical interaction enhances the amount of squeezing obtained in the experiment.
In quantum mechanics, the Heisenberg uncertainty principle places a fundamental limit in the measurement precision for certain pairs of physical quantities, such as position and momentum, time and energy or amplitude and phase. Due to the Heisenberg uncertainty principle, any attempt to extract certain information from a quantum object would inevitably perturbitinanunpredictableway. This raises one question,"What is the precision limit in such quantum measurements?" The answer, standard quantum limit (SQL), has been obtained by Braginsky to figure out the fundamental quantum limits of displacement measurement in the context of gravitational wave detection. To circumvent the unavoidable quantum back-action from the priori measurement, quantum non-demolition measurement (QND) methods were introduced by Braginsky and Thorne. To surpass the SQL of the displacement measurement in an interferometer, one can measure only one quadrature of the mechanical motion while give up the information about the other canonically conjugated quadrature. Such measurements can be performed by periodic driving the mechanical oscillator, i.e. the back-action evading (BAE) measurement. Cavity optomechanics provides an ideal table-top platform for the testing of the quantum measurement theory. Mechanical oscillator is coupled to electromagnetic field via radiation pressure, which is enhanced by an optical micro-cavity. Over the last decade, laser cooling has enabled the preparation of mechanical oscillator in the ground state in both optical and microwave systems. BAE measurements of mechanical motion have been allowed in the microwave electromechanical systems, which led to the observations of mechanical squeezing and entanglement. However, despite the theoretical proposal almost 40 years ago, the sub-SQL measurements still remain elusive. This thesis reports our efforts approach the sub-SQL with a highly sideband-resolved silicon optomechanical crystal (OMC) in a 3He buffer gas environment at 2K. The OMC couples an optical mode at telecommunication wavelengths and a colocalized mechanical mode at GHz frequencies. The Helium3 buffer gas environment allows sufficient thermalization of the OMC despite the drastically decreased silicon thermal conductivity. We observe Floquet dynamics in motional sideband asymmetry measurement when employing multiple probe tones. The Floquet dynamics arises due to presence of Kerr-type nonlinearities and gives rise to an artificially modified motional sideband asymmetry, resulting from a synthetic gauge field among the Fourier modes. We demonstrate the first optical continuous two-tone backaction-evading measurement of a localized GHz frequency mechanical mode of silicon OMC close to the ground state by showing the transition from conventional sideband asymmetry to backaction-evading measurement. We discover a fundamental two-tone optomechanical instability and demonstrate its implications on the back-action evading measurement. Such instability imposes a fundamental limitation on other two-tone schemes, such as dissipative quantum mechanical squeezing. We demonstrate state-of-art laser sideband cooling of the mechanical motion to a mean thermal occupancy of 0.09 quantum, which is 7.4dB of the oscillator's zero-point energy and corresponds to 92% ground state probability. This also enables us to observe the dissipative mechanical squeezing below the zero-point motion for the first time with laser light.