We study high-stress SiN films for reaching the quantum regime with mesoscopic oscillators connected to a room-temperature thermal bath, for which there are stringent requirements on the oscillators' quality factors and frequencies. Our SiN films support mechanical modes with unprecedented products of mechanical quality factor $Q_m$ and frequency $ν_m$ reaching $Q_{m} ν_m \simeq2 \times 10^{13}$ Hz. The SiN membranes exhibit a low optical absorption characterized by Im$(n) \lesssim 10^{-5}$ at 935 nm, representing a 15 times reduction for SiN membranes. We have developed an apparatus to simultaneously cool the motion of multiple mechanical modes based on a short, high-finesse Fabry-Perot cavity and present initial cooling results along with future possibilities.
Observation of quantum phenomena in cryogenic, optically cooled mechanical resonators has been recently achieved by a few experiments based on cavity optomechanics. A well-established experimental platform is based on a thin film stoichiometric ($ Si_3 N_4 $) nanomembrane embedded in a Fabry-Perot cavity, where the coupling with the light field is provided by the radiation pressure of the light impinging on the membrane surface. Two crucial parameters have to be optimized to ensure that these systems work at the quantum level: the cooperativity $ C$ describing the optomechanical coupling and t…
We investigate the optomechanical properties of tensile-strained ternary InGaP nanomembranes grown on GaAs. This material system combines the benefits of highly strained membranes based on stoichiometric silicon nitride, with the unique properties of thin-film semiconductor single crystals, as previously demonstrated with suspended GaAs. Here we employ lattice mismatch in epitaxial growth to impart an intrinsic tensile strain to a monocrystalline thin film (approximately 30 nm thick). These structures exhibit mechanical quality factors of 2*10^6 or beyond at room temperature and 17 K for eigen…
We investigate the single-photon transport in a single-mode optical fiber coupled to an optomechanical system in the single-photon strong-coupling regime. The single-photon transmission amplitude is analytically obtained with a real-space approach and the effects of thermal noises are studied via master-equation simulations. The results provide an explicit understanding of optomechanical interaction and offer a useful guide for manipulating single photons in optomechanical systems. Based on the theoretical framework, we further propose a scheme to generate the mechanical NOON states with arbit…
This paper investigates a novel hybrid cavity QED-optomechanics situation. We solve the Hamiltonian problem of a cavity coupled both to a two-level atom via a Jaynes-Cummings coupling and to a mechanical motion via radiation pressure coupling. The atom-cavity polariton number operator commutes with the total Hamiltonian leading to an exact analytical solution involving tripartite atom-cavity-mechanics polarons. Under optical pumping of polaronic transitions the system displays unusual atom-assisted cooling and amplification of mechanical motion. We demonstrate the possibility to obtain enhance…
We study the photon statistics properties of few-photon transport in an optomechanical system where an optomechanical cavity couples to two empty cavities. By analytically deriving the one- and two-photon currents in terms of a zero-time-delayed two-order correlation function, we show that a photon blockade can be achieved in both the single-photon strong-coupling regime and the single-photon weak-coupling regime due to the nonlinear interacting and multipath interference. Furthermore, our systems can be applied as a quantum optical diode, a single-photon source, and a quantum optical capacito…
The quantum dynamics of optomechanical systems was mostly studied for their fluctuations around classical steady states. We present a theoretical approach to determining the system observables of optomechanical systems as genuine quantum objects, for example, a coupled quantum mechanical oscillator to a cavity single photon. In this approach we study the dynamics of such systems in strong coupling regime. We find that, under strong optomechanical coupling, steady quantum states of optomechanical systems driven by continuous-wave single photons exhibit periodic oscillation and cavity noise cons…
We propose an approach to enhance the mechanical effects of single photons in a two-mode optomechanical system. This is achieved by introducing a resonance-frequency modulation to the cavity fields. When the modulation frequency and amplitude satisfy certain conditions, the mechanical displacement induced by single photons could be larger than the quantum zero-point fluctuation of the oscillating resonator. This method can be used to create distinct mechanical superposition states.
In a canonical optomechanical system, mechanical vibrations are dynamically encoded on an optical probe field which reciprocally exerts a backaction force. Due to the weak single photon coupling strength achieved with macroscopic oscillators, most of existing experiments were conducted with large photon numbers to achieve sizeable effects, thereby causing a dilution of the original optomechanical non-linearity. Here, we investigate the optomechanical interaction of an ultrasensitive suspended nanowire inserted in a fiber-based microcavity mode. This implementation allows to enter far into the …
We study the optomechanical behaviour of a driven Fabry-Pérot cavity containing two vibrating dielectric membranes. We characterize the cavity-mode frequency shift as a function of the two-membrane positions, and report a $\sim 2.47$ gain in the optomechanical coupling strength of the membrane relative motion with respect to the single membrane case. This is achieved when the two membranes are properly positioned to form an inner cavity which is resonant with the driving field. We also show that this two-membrane system has the capability to tune the single-photon optomechanical coupling on de…
We present exact analytical solutions to study the coherent interaction between a single photon and the mechanical motion of a membrane in quadratic optomechanics. We consider single-photon emission and scattering when the photon is initially inside the cavity and in the fields outside the cavity, respectively. Using our solutions, we calculate the single-photon emission and scattering spectra, and find relations between the spectral features and the system's inherent parameters, such as: the optomechanical coupling strength, the mechanical frequency, and the cavity-field decay rate. In partic…
We theoretically analyze the light scattering of an optomechanical cavity which strongly interacts with a single two-level system and couples simultaneously to a mechanical oscillator by radiation forces. The analysis is based on the assumptions that the system is driven at low intensity, and that the mechanical interaction is sufficiently weak, permitting a perturbative treatment. We find quantum interference in the scattering paths, which allows to suppress the Stokes-component of the scattered light. This effect can be exploited to reduce the motional energy of the mechanical oscillator.
We propose a spectrometric method to reconstruct the motional states of mechanical modes in optomechanics. This is achieved by detecting the single-photon emission and scattering spectra of the optomechanical cavity. Owing to an optomechanical coupling, the \emph{a priori} phonon-state distributions contribute to the spectral magnitude, and hence we can infer information on the phonon states from the measured spectral data. When the single-photon optomechanical-coupling strength is moderately larger than the mechanical frequency, then our method works well for a wide range of cavity-field deca…
We theoretically explore a quantum memory using a single nanoparticle levitated in an optical dipole trap and subjected to feedback cooling. This protocol is realized by storing and retrieving a single photon quantum state from a mechanical mode in levitated cavityless optomechanics. We describe the effectiveness of the photon-phonon-photon transfer in terms of the fidelity, the Wigner function, and the zero-delay second-order autocorrelation function. For experimentally accessible parameters, our numerical results indicate robust conversion of the quantum states of the input signal photon to …
We prove feasibility of high-fidelity pulsed optomechanical interface based on all-optical presqueezing of non-Gaussian quantum states of light before they enter the optomechanical system. We demonstrate that feasible presqueezing of optical states effectively increases the low noise transfer of them to mechanical oscillator. It allows one to surpass the limit necessary to transfer highly nonclassical states with negative Wigner function. In particular, we verify that with this help single photon states of light can be efficiently turned to single phonon states of mechanical oscillator, keepin…
A major goal within the field of optomechanics is to achieve the single-photon strong coupling regime, wherein even a mechanical displacement as small as the zero-point uncertainty is enough to shift an optical cavity resonance by more than its linewidth. This goal is difficult, however, due to the small zero-point motion of conventional mechanical systems. Here, we show that an atom trapped in and coupled to a cavity constitutes an attractive platform for realizing this regime. In particular, while many experiments focus on achieving strong coupling between a photon and the atomic internal de…
We study two-photon scattering in a mixed cavity optomechanical system, which is composed of a single-mode cavity field coupled to a single-mode mechanical oscillation via both the first-order and quadratic optomechanical interactions. By solving the scattering problem within the Wigner-Weisskopf framework, we obtain the analytical scattering state and find four physical processes associated with the two-photon scattering in this system. We calculate the two-photon scattering spectrum and find that two-photon frequency anticorrelation can be induced in the scattering process. We also establish…
We consider a quantum optomechanical scheme wherein an ordered two-dimensional array of laser-trapped atoms is used as a movable membrane. The extremely light mass of the atoms yields very strong optomechanical coupling, while their spatial order largely eliminates scattering losses. We show that this combination opens the way for quantum optomechanical nonlinearities, well within the ultimate single-photon strong-coupling regime. As an example, we analyze the possibility to observe optomechanically induced quantum effects such as photon blockade and time-delayed non-classical correlations. We…
We consider transfer of a highly nonclassical quantum state through an optomechanical system. That is we investigate a protocol consisting of sequential upload, storage and reading out of the quantum state from a mechanical mode of an optomechanical system. We show that provided the input state is in a test-bed single-photon Fock state, the Wigner function of the recovered state can have negative values at the origin, which is a manifest of nonclassicality of the quantum state of the macroscopic mechanical mode and the overall transfer protocol itself. Moreover, we prove that the recovered sta…
We give a theoretical description of a coherently driven opto-mechanical system with a single added photon. The photon source is modeled as a cavity which initially contains one photon and which is irreversibly coupled to the opto-mechanical system. We show that the probability for the additional photon to be emitted by the opto-mechanical cavity will exhibit oscillations under a Lorentzian envelope, when the driven interaction with the mechanical resonator is strong enough. Our scheme provides a feasible route towards quantum state transfer between optical photons and micromechanical resonato…
In the paper we study the nonlinear mechanical cooling processes in the intrinsic quadratically optomechanical coupling system without linearizing the optomechanical interaction. We apply the scattering theory to calculate the transition rates between different mechanical Fock states with the use of the resolvent of Hamiltonian, which allows for a direct identification of the underlying physical processes, where only even-phonon transitions are permitted and odd-phonon transitions are forbidden. We verify the feasibility of the approach by comparing the steady-state mean phonon number obtained…
We propose a scheme that can generate a tunable double optomechanically induced transparency (OMIT) in a hybrid optomechanical cavity system, in which the mechanical resonator of an optomechanical cavity is coupled to an additional mechanical resonator, and the additional mechanical resonator can be driven by a weak external coherently mechanical driving field. We show that both the intensity and the phase of the the external mechanical driving field can control the propagation of the probe field, including changing the transmission spectrum curve from a double-window to a single-window. Our s…
We present an analytic solution describing the quantum state of a single photon after interacting with a moving mirror in a cavity. This includes situations when the photon is initially stored in a cavity mode as well as when the photon is injected into the cavity. In addition, we obtain the spectrum of the output photon in the resolved-sideband limit, which reveals spectral features of the single-photon strong-coupling regime in this system. We also clarify the conditions under which the phonon sidebands are visible and the photon-state frequency shift can be resolved.
We show that a cavity optomechanical system formed by a mechanical resonator simultaneously coupled to two modes of an optical cavity can be used for the implementation of a deterministic quantum phase gate between optical qubits associated with the two intracavity modes. The scheme is realizable for sufficiently strong single-photon optomechanical coupling in the resolved sideband regime, and is robust against cavity losses.
We propose a spectrometric method to detect a classical weak force acting upon the moving end mirror in a cavity optomechanical system. The force changes the equilibrium position of the end mirror, and thus the resonance frequency of the cavity field depends on the force to be detected. As a result, the magnitude of the force can be inferred by analyzing the single-photon emission and scattering spectra of the optomechanical cavity. Since the emission and scattering processes are much faster than the characteristic mechanical dissipation, the influence of the mechanical thermal noise is neglig…
We discuss a scheme for macrorealistic theories of the Leggett-Garg form [A. J. Leggett and A. Garg, Phys. Rev. Lett. 54, 857 (1985)]. Our scheme is based on a hybrid optomechanical system. It seems reasonable to test these inequalities with an optomechanical system, since in an optomechanical cavity it is possible to create non-classical states of the mirror through a projective measurement on the cavity field. We will present the protocol to generate such non-classicality for a general optomechanical cavity and after we will carry out a theoretical test for one of the possible formulations o…
We investigate the nonlinear interaction between a squeezed cavity mode and a mechanical mode in an optomechanical system (OMS) that allows us to selectively obtain either a radiation-pressure coupling or a parametric-amplification process. The squeezing of the cavity mode can enhance the interaction strength into the single-photon strong-coupling regime, even when the OMS is originally in the weak-coupling regime. Moreover, the noise of the squeezed mode can be suppressed completely by introducing a broadband-squeezed vacuum that is phase-matched with the parametric amplification that squeeze…
We study the nonreciprocal transmission of a single-photon in a cavity optomechanical system, in which the cavity supports a clockwise and a counter-clockwise circulating optical modes, the mechanical resonator (MR) is excited by a weak coherent driving, and the signal photon is made up of a sequence of pulses with exactly one photon per pulse. We find that, if the input state is a single-photon state, it is insufficient to study the nonreciprocity only from the perspective of the transmission spectrums, since the frequencies where the nonreciprocity happens are far away from the peak frequenc…
Cavity optomechanics represents a flexible platform for the implementation of quantum technologies, useful in particular for the realization of quantum interfaces, quantum sensors and quantum information processing. However, the dispersive, radiation-pressure interaction between the mechanical and the electromagnetic modes is typically very weak, harnessing up to now the demonstration of interesting nonlinear dynamics and quantum control at the single photon level. It has already been shown both theoretically and experimentally that if the interaction is mediated by a Josephson circuit, one ca…
We study single photon optomechanics conditioned on photon counting events. By selecting only detection events that occur long after a photon pulse arrives at the cavity, the optomechanical interaction time can be increased, allowing a large momentum kick to be applied to the oscillator. We apply this to two optomechanical cavities set up within a Mach-Zhender interferometer driven by a single photon source. The conditional state of the mechanical modes in such a system becomes an entangled cat state for detection times resulting in maximum mechanical amplitude in phase space. Further we study…
We introduce a scheme to reconstruct an arbitrary quantum state of a mechanical oscillator network. We assume that a single element of the network is coupled to a cavity field via a linearized optomechanical interaction, whose time dependence is controlled by a classical driving field. By designing a suitable interaction profile, we show how the statistics of an arbitrary mechanical quadrature can be encoded in the cavity field, which can then be measured. We discuss the important special case of Gaussian state reconstruction, and study numerically the effectiveness of our scheme for a finite …
We propose and analyze theoretically a cavity optomechanical analog of a heat pump that uses a polariton fluid to cool mechanical modes coupled to a single pre-cooled phonon mode via external modulation of the substrate of the mechanical resonator. This approach permits to cool phonon modes of arbitrary frequencies not limited by the cavity-optical field detuning deep into the quantum regime from room temperature.
In view of the integration of membrane resonators with more complex MEMS structures, we developed a general fabrication procedure for circular shape SiN$_x$ membranes using Deep Reactive Ion Etching (DRIE). Large area and high-stress SiN$_x$ membranes were fabricated and used as optomechanical resonators in a Michelson interferometer and in a Fabry-Pérot cavity. The measurements show that the fabrication process preserves both the optical quality and the mechanical quality factor of the membrane.
Quantum superposition in mechanical systems is not only key evidence for macroscopic quantum coherence, but can also be utilized in modern quantum technology. Here we propose an efficient approach for creating macroscopically distinct mechanical superposition states in a two-mode optomechanical system. Photon hopping between the two cavity modes is modulated sinusoidally. The modulated photon tunneling enables an ultrastrong radiation-pressure force acting on the mechanical resonator, and hence significantly increases the mechanical displacement induced by a single photon. We study systematica…
In this paper we discuss how red-sideband cooling is modified in the single-photon strong-coupling regime of cavity optomechanics where the radiation pressure of a single photon displaces the mechanical oscillator by more than its zero-point uncertainty. Using Fermi's Golden rule we calculate the transition rates induced by the optical drive without linearizing the optomechanical interaction. In the resolved-sideband limit we find multiple-phonon cooling resonances for strong single-photon coupling that lead to non-thermal steady states including the possibility of phonon anti-bunching. Our st…
Cavity optomechanical systems are approaching a strong-coupling regime where the coherent dynamics of nanomechanical resonators can be manipulated and controlled by optical fields at the single photon level. Here we propose an interferometric scheme able to detect optomechanical coherent interaction at the single-photon level which is experimentally feasible with state-of-the-art devices.
Optomechanics experiments are rapidly approaching the regime where the radiation pressure of a single photon displaces the mechanical oscillator by more than its zero-point uncertainty. We show that in this limit the power spectrum has multiple sidebands and that the cavity response has several resonances in the resolved-sideband limit. Using master-equation simulations, we also study the crossover from the weak-coupling many-photon to the single-photon strong-coupling regime. Finally, we find non-Gaussian steady-states of the mechanical oscillator when multi-photon transitions are resonant. O…
A pertinent question in cavity optomechanics is whether reaching the regime of large single-photon cooperativity, where the single-photon coupling rate exceeds the geometric mean of the cavity and mechanical decay rates, can enable any new phenomena. We show that in some multimode optomechanical systems, the single-photon cooperativity can indeed be a figure of merit. We first study a system with one cavity mode and two mechanical oscillators which combines the concepts of levitated optomechanics and coherent scattering with standard dispersive optomechanics. Later, we study a more complicated…
We theoretically analyze antibunching of the phonon field in an optomechanical oscillator employ- ing the membrane-in-the-middle geometry. More specifically, a single-mode mechanical oscillator is quadratically coupled to a single-mode cavity field in the regime in which the cavity dissipation is a dominant source of damping, and adiabatic elimination of the cavity field leads to an effective cubic nonlinearity for the mechanics. We show analytically in the weak coupling regime that the mechan- ics displays a chaotic phonon field for small optomechanical cooperativity, whereas an antibunched s…
Cavity optomechanics allows the characterization of a vibration mode, its cooling and quantum manipulation using electromagnetic fields. Regarding nanomechanical as well as electronic properties, single wall carbon nanotubes are a prototypical experimental system. At cryogenic temperatures, as high quality factor vibrational resonators, they display strong interaction between motion and single-electron tunneling. Here, we demonstrate large optomechanical coupling of a suspended carbon nanotube quantum dot and a microwave cavity, amplified by several orders of magnitude via the nonlinearity of …
Optomechanical devices sensitively transduce and actuate motion of nanomechanical structures using light. Single--crystal diamond promises to improve the performance of optomechanical devices, while also providing opportunities to interface nanomechanics with diamond color center spins and related quantum technologies. Here we demonstrate dissipative waveguide--optomechanical coupling exceeding 35 GHz/nm to diamond nanobeams supporting both optical waveguide modes and mechanical resonances, and use this optomechanical coupling to measure nanobeam displacement with a sensitivity of $9.5$ fm/$\s…
Surface acoustic waves (SAWs) are a versatile tool for coherently interfacing with a variety of solid-state quantum systems spanning microwave to optical frequencies, including superconducting qubits, spins, and quantum emitters. Here, we demonstrate SAW cavity optomechanics with quantum emitters in 2D materials, specifically monolayer WSe$_2$, on a planar lithium niobate SAW resonator driven by superconducting electronics. Using steady-state photoluminescence spectroscopy and time-resolved single-photon counting, we map the temporal dynamics of modulated 2D emitters under coupling to differen…
We present a novel proposal for generating quantum superpositions of macroscopically distinct states of a bulk mechanical oscillator, compatible with existing optomechanical devices operating in the readily achievable bad-cavity limit. The scheme is based on a pulsed cavity optomechanical quantum non-demolition (QND) interaction, driven by displaced non-Gaussian states, and measurement-induced feedback, avoiding the need for strong single-photon optomechanical coupling. Furthermore, we show that single-quadrature cooling of the mechanical oscillator is sufficient for efficient state preparatio…
The field of cavity optomechanics has achieved groundbreaking photonic control and detection of mechanical oscillators, based on their coupling to linear electromagnetic modes. Lately, however, there is an uprising interest in exploring cavity nonlinearities as a powerful new resource in radiation-pressure interacting systems. Here, we present a flux-mediated optomechanical device combining a nonlinear Josephson-based superconducting quantum interference cavity with a mechanical nanobeam. We demonstrate how the intrinsic Kerr nonlinearity of the microwave circuit can be used for a counter-intu…
In the field of cavity nano-optomechanics, the nanoresonator-in-the-middle approach consists in inserting a sub-wavelength sized deformable resonator, here a nanowire, in the small mode volume of a fiber microcavity. Internal resonances in the nanowire enhance the light nanowire interaction which provide giant coupling strengthes -- sufficient to enter the single photon regime of cavity optomechanics -- at the condition to precisely position the nanowire within the cavity field. Here we expose a theoretical description that combines an analytical formulation of the Mie-scattering of the intrac…
Single-crystal diamond cavity optomechanical devices are a promising example of a hybrid quantum system: by coupling mechanical resonances to both light and electron spins, they can enable new ways for photons to control solid state qubits. However, realizing cavity optomechanical devices from high quality diamond chips has been an outstanding challenge. Here we demonstrate single-crystal diamond cavity optomechanical devices that can enable photon-phonon-spin coupling. Cavity optomechanical coupling to $2\,\text{GHz}$ frequency ($f_\text{m}$) mechanical resonances is observed. In room tempera…
In cavity optomechanics, light is used to control mechanical motion. A central goal of the field is achieving single-photon strong coupling, which would enable the creation of quantum superposition states of motion. Reaching this limit requires significant improvements in optomechanical coupling and cavity coherence. Here we introduce an optomechanical architecture consisting of a silicon nitride membrane coupled to a three-dimensional superconducting microwave cavity. Exploiting their large quality factors, we achieve an optomechanical cooperativity of 146,000 and perform sideband cooling of …
The dispersive interaction of a Bose-Einstein condensate with a single mode of a high-finesse optical cavity realizes the radiation pressure coupling Hamiltonian. In this system the role of the mechanical oscillator is played by a single condensate excitation mode that is selected by the cavity mode function. We study the effect of atomic s-wave collisions and show that it merely renormalizes parameters of the usual optomechanical interaction. Moreover, we show that even in the case of strong harmonic confinement---which invalidates the use of Bloch states---a single excitation mode of the Bos…
We investigate the collective optomechanics of an ensemble of scatterers inside a Fabry-Perot resonator and identify an optimized configuration where the ensemble is transmissive, in contrast with the usual reflective optomechanics approach. In this configuration, the optomechanical coupling of a specific collective mechanical mode can be several orders of magnitude larger than the single-element case, and long-range interactions can be generated between the different elements since light permeates throughout the array. This new regime should realistically allow for achieving strong single-pho…
We propose a superconducting circuit comprising a dc-SQUID with mechanically compliant arm embedded in a coplanar microwave cavity that realizes an optomechanical system with a degenerate or non-degenerate parametric interaction generated via the dynamical Casimir effect. For experimentally feasible parameters, this setup is capable of reaching the single-photon, ultra-strong coupling regime, while simultaneously possessing a parametric coupling strength approaching the renormalized cavity frequency. This opens up the possibility of observing the interplay between these two fundamental nonline…
We review the physics of hybrid optomechanical systems consisting of a mechanical oscillator interacting with both a radiation mode and an additional matter-like system. We concentrate on the cases embodied by either a single or a multi-atom system (a Bose-Einstein condensate, in particular) and discuss a wide range of physical effects, from passive mechanical cooling to the set-up of multipartite entanglement, from optomechanical non-locality to the achievement of non-classical states of a single mechanical mode. The reviewed material showcases the viability of hybridised cavity optomechanica…
We study theoretically a three-mode optomechanical system where two mechanical oscillators are independently coupled to a single cavity mode. By optimized two-tone or four-tone driving of the cavity one can prepare the mechanical oscillators in an entangled two-mode squeezed state, even if they start in a thermal state. The highly-pure, symmetric steady-state achieved allows the optimal fidelity of standard continuous-variable teleportation protocols to be achieved. In contrast to other reservoir engineering approaches to generating mechanical entanglement, only a single reservoir is required …
We investigate the role of time delay in cold-damping optomechanics with multiple mechanical resonances. For instantaneous electronic response, it was recently shown in \textit{Phys. Rev. Lett. \textbf{123}, 203605 (2019)}, that a single feedback loop is sufficient to simultaneously remove thermal noise from many mechanical modes. While the intrinsic delayed response of the electronics can induce single mode and mutual heating between adjacent modes, we propose to counteract such detrimental effects by introducing an additional time delay to the feedback loop. For lossy cavities and broadband …
We study the optomechanical properties of stoichiometric SiN resonators through a combination of spectroscopic and interferometric imaging techniques. At room temperature, we demonstrate ultrahigh quality factors of $5 \times 10^7$ and a $f \times Q$ product of $1 \times 10^{14}$ Hz that, to our knowledge, correspond to the largest values yet reported for mesoscopic flexural resonators. Through a comprehensive study of the limiting dissipation mechanisms as a function of resonator and substrate geometry, we identify radiation loss through the supporting substrate as the dominant loss process. …
We study the optomechanical coupling of a single-layer graphene with a high-Q Fabry-Perot microcavity in the membrane-in-the-middle configuration. In ordinary dissipative coupling systems, mechanical oscillators modulate the loss associated with the input coupling of the cavity mode; while in our system, the graphene oscillator couples dissipatively with the cavity mode through modulating its absorption loss. By analyzing the effects of the interband transition of a graphene suspended near the node of the cavity field, we obtain strong and tunable dissipative coupling without excessively reduc…
We propose a versatile, free-space cavity optomechanics platform built from two photonic crystal membranes, one of which is freely suspended, and designed to form a microcavity less than one wavelength long. This cavity features a series of photonic bound states in the continuum that, in principle, trap light forever and can be favorably used together with evanescent coupling for realizing various types of optomechanical couplings, such as linear or quadratic coupling of either dispersive or dissipative type, by tuning the photonic crystal patterning and cavity length. Crucially, this platform…
We present an approach for exponentially enhancing the single-photon coupling strength in an optomechanical system using only additional linear resources. It allows one to reach the quantum nonlinear regime of optomechanics, where nonlinear effects are observed at the single photon level, even if the bare coupling strength is much smaller than the mechanical frequency and cavity damping rate. Our method is based on using a large amplitude, strongly detuned mechanical parametric drive to amplify mechanical zero-point fluctuations and hence enhance the radiation pressure interaction. It has the …
We propose to use the resonant enhancement of the parametric instability in an optomechanical system of two optical modes coupled to a mechanical oscillator to prepare mechanical states with sub-Poissonian phonon statistics. Strong single photon coupling is not required. The requirements regarding sideband resolution, circulating cavity power and environmental temperature are in reach with state of the art parameters of optomechanical crystals. Phonon antibunching can be verfied in a Hanburry-Brown-Twiss measurement on the output field of the optomechanical cavity.
