We investigate a semiconductor quantum dot as a microscopic analog of a basic optomechanical setup. We show, that optomechanical features can be reproduced by the solid-state platform, arising from parallels of the underlying interaction processes, which in the optomechanical case is the radiation pressure coupling and in the semiconductor case the electron-phonon coupling. In optomechanics, phonons are typically induced via confined photons, acting on a movable mirror, while in the semiconductor system the phonons are emitted by the laser-driven electronic system. There are analogous effects present for both systems, featuring bistabilities, optically induced phonon lasing and enhanced phonon loss. Nonetheless, the different statistical nature of the optical cavity and the electronic system also leads to qualitative differences.
Some optomechanical systems can be transparent to a probe field when a strong driving field is applied. These systems can provide an optomechanical analogue of electromagnetically-induced transparency (EIT). We study the transmission of a probe field through a hybrid optomechanical system consisting of a cavity and a mechanical resonator with a two-level system (qubit). The qubit might be an intrinsic defect inside the mechanical resonator, a superconducting artificial atom, or another two-level system. The mechanical resonator is coupled to the cavity field via radiation pressure and to the q…
We realize a superconducting circuit analog of the generic cavity-optomechanical Hamiltonian by longitudinally coupling two superconducting resonators, which are an order of magnitude different in frequency. We achieve longitudinal coupling by embedding a superconducting quantum interference device (SQUID) into a high frequency resonator, making its resonance frequency depend on the zero point current fluctuations of a nearby low frequency LC-resonator. By employing sideband drive fields we enhance the intrinsic coupling strength of about 15 kHz up to 280 kHz by controlling the amplitude of th…
We predict a set of unusual quantum acoustic phenomena resulting from sound-matter interactions in a fully tunable solid-state platform, in which an array of solid-state spins in diamond are coupled to quantized acoustic waves in a one-dimensional (1D) optomechanical crystal. We find that, by a spatially varying laser drive that introduces a position-dependent phase in the optomechanical interaction, the mechanical band structure can be tuned in situ, consequently leading to unconventional quantum sound-matter interactions. We show that quasi-chiral sound-matter interactions can occur, with tu…
The flat band localization, as an important phenomenon in solid state physics, is fundamentally interesting in the exploration of exotic ground property of many-body system. Here we demonstrate the appearance of a flat band in a general bipartite optomechanical lattice, which could have one or two dimensional framework. Physically, it is induced by the hybrid interference between the photon and phonon modes in optomechanical lattice, which is quite different from the destructive interference resulted from the special geometry structure in the normal lattice (e.g., Lieb lattice). Moreover, this…
We propose a superconducting electrical circuit that simulates a quadratic optomechanical system. A capacitor placed between two transmission-line (TL) resonators acts like a semi-transparent membrane, and a superconducting quantum interference device (SQUID) that terminates a TL resonator behaves like a movable mirror. Combining these circuit elements, it is possible to simulate a quadratic optomechanical coupling whose coupling strength is determined by the coupling capacitance and the tunable bias flux through the SQUIDs. Estimates using realistic parameters suggest that an improvement in t…
We demonstrate optomechanical quantum control of the internal electronic states of a diamond nitrogen vacancy (NV) center in the resolved-sideband regime by coupling the NV to both optical fields and surface acoustic waves via a phonon-assisted optical transition and by taking advantage of the strong excited-state electron-phonon coupling of a NV center. Optomechanically-driven Rabi oscillations as well as quantum interferences between the optomechanical sideband and the direct dipole-optical transitions have been realized. These studies open the door to using resolved-sideband optomechanical …
We present a two-dimensional array of nearest-neighbor coupled waveguides that is the optical analog of a quantum optomechanical system. We show that the quantum model predicts the appearance of effective column isolation, diagonal-coupling and other non-trivial couplings in the two-dimensional photonic lattice under a standard approximation from ion-trap cavity electrodynamics. We provide an approximate impulse function for the case of effective column isolation and compare it with exact numerical propagation in the photonic lattice.
In this paper, we theoretically propose an optomechanical scheme to explore the possibility of simulating the propagation of the collective excitations of the photon fluid in a curved spacetime. For this purpose, we introduce two theoretical models for two-dimensional photon gas in a planar optomechanical microcavity and a two-dimensional array of coupled optomechanical systems. In the reversed dissipation regime (RDR) of cavity optomechanics where the mechanical oscillator reaches equilibrium with its thermal reservoir much faster than the cavity modes, the mechanical degrees of freedom can a…
Optomechanical systems have been shown both theoretically and experimentally to exhibit an analogon to atomic electromagnetically induced transparency, with sharp transmission features that are controlled by a second laser beam. Here we investigate these effects in the regime where the fundamental nonlinear nature of the optomechanical interaction becomes important. We demonstrate that pulsed transistor-like switching of transmission still works even in this regime. We also show that optomechanically induced transparency at the second mechanical sideband could be a sensitive tool to see first …
The future of quantum communication systems and quantum networks heavily rely on the ability to fabricate and coherently control the conversion of photons between different modes based on a solid-state plateform. In this work, we propose and theoretically investigate a scheme to optomechanically control coherent mode conversion of optical photons by utilizing two optically coupled hybrid semiconductor microcavities containing a quantum dot (QD). One of the microcavity is pumped by an external laser and the second cavity is driven by light emitted by the QD that is embedded in the interface sep…
Coherent conversion of photons to magnons, and back, provides a natural mechanism for rapid control of interactions between stationary spins with long coherence times and high-speed photons. Despite the large frequency difference between optical photons and magnons, coherent conversion can be achieved through a three-particle interaction between one magnon and two photons whose frequency difference is resonant with the magnon frequency, as in optomechanics with two photons and a phonon. The large spin density of a transparent ferromagnetic insulator (such as the ferrite yttrium iron garnet) in…
Quantum cloning is an essential operation in quantum information and quantum computing. Similar to the `copy' operation in classical computing, the cloning of flying bits for further processing from the solid-state quantum bits in storage is an operation frequently used in quantum information processing. Here we propose a high-fidelity and controllable quantum cloning scheme between solid bits and flying bits. In order to overcome the obstacles from the no-cloning theorem and the weak phonon-photon interaction, we introduce a hybrid optomechanical system that performs both the probabilistic cl…
Here we show that quantum states of a mechanical oscillator can be generated in an optomechanical analogue of the micromaser, in absence of any atom-like subsystem, thus exhibiting single-atom masing effects in a system composed solely of oscillator components. In the regime where the single-photon coupling strength is on the order of the cavity decay rate, a cavity mode with at most a single-excitation present gives rise to sub-Poissonian oscillator limit-cycles that generate quantum features in the steady state just above the renormalized cavity resonance frequency and mechanical sidebands. …
Optomechanical systems couple an electromagnetic cavity to a mechanical resonator which is typically formed from a solid object. The range of phenomena accessible to these systems depends on the properties of the mechanical resonator and on the manner in which it couples to the cavity fields. In both respects, a mechanical resonator formed from superfluid liquid helium offers several appealing features: low electromagnetic absorption, high thermal conductivity, vanishing viscosity, well-understood mechanical loss, and in situ alignment with cryogenic cavities. In addition, it offers degrees of…
We present a detailed theoretical analysis of a weakly driven multimode optomechanical system, in which two optical modes are strongly and near-resonantly coupled to a single mechanical mode via a three-wave mixing interaction. We calculate one- and two-time intensity correlations of the two optical fields and compare them to analogous correlations in atom-cavity systems. Nonclassical photon correlations arise when the optomechanical coupling $g$ exceeds the cavity decay rate $κ$, and we discuss signatures of one- and two-photon resonances as well as quantum interference. We also find a long-l…
We propose a scheme that can generate tunable optomechanically induced transparency in a hybrid piezooptomechanical cavity system. The system is composed of a high-quality planar distributed Bragg reflector cavity modified with an embedded Gaussian-shaped defect. Moreover, interdigitated transducers are fabricated on the surface of the cavity to generate surface acoustic waves. Under the actuation of the surface acoustic wave, the upper Bragg mirrors can be vibrated as a bulk acoustic resonator, and the distributed Bragg reflector cavity becomes a standard three-level optomechanical system. In…
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.
We investigate theoretically the extension of cavity optomechanics to multiple membrane systems. We describe such a system in terms of the coupling of the collective normal modes of the membrane array to the light fields. We show these modes can be optically addressed individually and be cooled, trapped and characterized, e.g. via quantum nondemolition measurements. Analogies between this system and a linear chain of trapped ions or dipolar molecules imply the possibility of related applications in the quantum regime.
Nano- and micromechanical solid-state quantum devices have become a focus of attention. Reliably generating nonclassical states of their motion is of interest both for addressing fundamental questions about macroscopic quantum phenomena and for developing quantum technologies in the domains of sensing and transduction. We used quantum optical control techniques to conditionally generate single-phonon Fock states of a nanomechanical resonator. We performed a Hanbury Brown and Twiss-type experiment that verified the nonclassical nature of the phonon state without requiring full state reconstruct…
Optomechanical systems provide a means for studying and controlling quantum effects in the motion of macroscopic objects. To date, quantum optomechanical effects have been studied in objects made from solids and gases. Here we describe measurements of quantum behavior in the vibrations of a liquid body. Specifically, we monitor the fluctuations of an individual acoustic standing wave in superfluid liquid helium, and find that it displays the characteristic signatures of zero-point motion and measurement back-action. This opens the possibility of exploiting the properties of liquids in general …
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…
We explore theoretically the optomechanical interaction between a light field and a mechanical mode of ultracold fermionic atoms inside a Fabry-Pérot cavity. The low-lying phonon mode of the fermionic ensemble is a collective density oscillation associated with particle-hole excitations, and is mathematically analogous to the momentum side-mode excitations of a bosonic condensate. The mechanical motion of the fermionic particle-hole system behaves hence as a ``moving mirror.'' We derive an effective system Hamiltonian that has the form of generic optomechanical systems. We also discuss the exp…
Cavity optomechanics has proven to be a field of research rich with possibilities for studying motional cooling, squeezing, quantum entanglement and metrology in solid state systems. While to date most studies have focused on the modulation of the cavity frequency by the moving element, the emergence of new materials will soon allow to explore the influences of nonlinear optical effects. We therefore study in this work the effects due to a nonlinear position-modulated self-Kerr interaction and find that this leads to an effective coupling that scales with the square of the photon number, meani…
The strength of optomechanical interactions in a cavity optomechanical system can be quantified by a vacuum coupling rate $\vcr$ analogous to cavity quantum electrodynamics. This single figure of merit removes the ambiguity in the frequently quoted coupling parameter defining the frequency shift for a given mechanical displacement, and the effective mass of the mechanical mode. Here we demonstrate and verify a straightforward experimental technique to derive the vacuum optomechanical coupling rate. It only requires applying a known frequency modulation of the employed electromagnetic probe fie…
We propose a scheme that is able to generate the microwave controlled optical double optome-chanical induced transparency (OMIT) in a hybrid piezo-optomechanical cavity system, which a piezoelectric optomechanical crystal AlN-nanobeam resonator is placed in a superconducting microwave cavity, and the AlN-nanobeam resonator can be simultaneously driven by both the optical field via the radiation pressure and the microwave field via the piezoelectric interaction. We show that in the presence of a strong pumped optical field applied to the optomechanical crystal cavity through the optical wavegui…
We propose and analyze a circuit that implements a nonlinear coupling between two superconducting microwave resonators. The resonators are coupled through a superconducting quantum interference device (SQUID) that terminates one of the resonators. This produces a nonlinear interaction on the standard optomechanical form, where the quadrature of one resonator couples to the photon number of the other resonator. The circuit therefore allows for all-electrical realizations of analogs to optomechanical systems, with coupling that can be both strong and tunable. We estimate the coupling strengths t…
Engineering phonon transport in physical systems is a subject of interest in the study of materials and plays a crucial role in controlling energy and heat transfer. Of particular interest are non-reciprocal phononic systems, which in direct analogy to electric diodes, provide a directional flow of energy. Here, we propose an engineered nanostructured material, in which tunable non-reciprocal phonon transport is achieved through optomechanical coupling. Our scheme relies on breaking time-reversal symmetry by a spatially varying laser drive, which manipulates low-energy acoustic phonons. Furthe…
We study unconventional cavity optomechanics and the acoustic analogue of radiation pressure to show the possibility of nonlinear coherent control of phonons in the acoustic quantum vacuum. Specifically, we study systems where a quantized optical field effectively modifies the frequency of an acoustic resonator. We present a general method to enhance such a nonlinear interaction by employing an intermediate qubit. Compared with conventional optomechanical systems, the roles of mechanical and optical resonators are interchanged, and the boundary condition of the phonon resonator can be modulate…
We report on cooling the center-of-mass motion of a nanoparticle due to a purely quadratic coupling between its motion and the optical field of a high finesse cavity. The resulting interaction gives rise to a Van der Pol nonlinear damping, which is analogous to conventional parametric feedback where the cavity provides passive feedback without measurement. We show experimentally that like feedback cooling the resulting energy distribution is strongly nonthermal and can be controlled by the nonlinear damping of the cavity. As quadratic coupling has a prominent role in proposed protocols to gene…
We propose two kinds of distinguishing parameter regimes to induce topological Su-Schrieffer-Heeger (SSH) phase in a one dimensional (1D) multi-resonator cavity optomechanical system via modulating the frequencies of both cavity fields and resonators. The introduction of the frequency modulations allows us to eliminate the Stokes heating process for the mapping of the tight-binding Hamiltonian without usual rotating wave approximation, which is totally different from the traditional mapping of the topological tight-binding model. We find that the tight-binding Hamiltonian can be mapped into a …
We consider theoretically the optomechanical interaction of several mechanical modes with a single quantized cavity field mode for linear and quadratic coupling. We focus specifically on situations where the optical dissipation is the dominant source of damping, in which case the optical field can be adiabatically eliminated, resulting in effective multimode interactions between the mechanical modes. In the case of linear coupling, the coherent contribution to the interaction can be exploited e.g. in quantum state swapping protocols, while the incoherent part leads to significant modifications…
We investigate the behavior of a quantum resonator coupled to a superconducting single-electron transistor tuned to the Josephson quasiparticle resonance and show that the dynamics is similar in many ways to that found in a micromaser. Coupling to the SSET can drive the resonator into non-classical states of self-sustained oscillation via either continuous or discontinuous transitions. Increasing the coupling further leads to a sequence of transitions and regions of multistability.
The mechanical influence on objects due to their interaction with light has been a central topic in atomic physics for decades. Thus, one finds that many concepts developed to describe cavity optomechanical systems with solid-state mechanical oscillators have also been developed in parallel in relation to cold atomic physics. I describe several of these ideas from atomic physics, including optical methods for detecting quantum states of single cold atoms and atomic ensembles, motional effects within single-atom cavity quantum electrodynamics, and collective optical effects such as superradiant…
Nanomechanical resonators have demonstrated great potential for use as versatile tools in a number of emerging quantum technologies. For such applications, the performance of these systems is restricted by the decoherence of their fragile quantum states, necessitating a thorough understanding of their dissipative coupling to the surrounding environment. In bulk amorphous solids, these dissipation channels are dominated at low temperatures by parasitic coupling to intrinsic two-level system (TLS) defects, however, there remains a disconnect between theory and experiment on how this damping mani…
Coherent quantum oscillators are basic physical systems both in quantum statistical physics and quantum thermodynamics. Their realizations in lab often involve solid-state devices sensitive to changes in ambient temperature. We represent states of the solid-state optomechanical oscillator with temperature-dependent frequency by equivalent states of the mechanical oscillator with temperature-dependent energy levels. We interpret the temperature dependence as a consequence of strong coupling between the oscillator and the heat bath. We explore parameter regimes corresponding to anomalous behavio…
A dielectric body couples with electromagnetic fields through radiation pressure and electrostrictive forces, which mediate phonon-photon coupling in cavity optomechanics. In a magnetic medium, according to Korteweg-Helmholtz formula, magnetostrictive forces should arise and lead to phonon-magnon interaction. Here we report such a coupled phonon-magnon system based on ferrimagnetic spheres, which we term as cavity magnomechanics, by analogy to cavity optomechanics. Coherent phonon-magnon interactions, including electromagnetically induced transparency and absorption, are demonstrated. Exciting…
The transport of sound and heat, in the form of phonons, can be limited by disorder-induced scattering. In electronic and optical settings the introduction of chiral transport, in which carrier propagation exhibits parity asymmetry, can remove elastic backscattering and provides robustness against disorder. However, suppression of disorder-induced scattering has never been demonstrated in non-topological phononic systems. Here we experimentally demonstrate a path for achieving robust phonon transport in the presence of material disorder, by explicitly inducing chirality through parity-selectiv…
Parametric coupling of optical and mechanical degrees of freedom forms the basis of many ultra-sensitive measurements of both force and mechanical displacement. An optical cavity with a mechanically compliant boundary enhances the optomechanical interaction, but also gives rise to qualitatively new coupled dynamics. As early as 1967, in a pioneering work, V. Braginsky analyzed theoretically the role of radiation pressure in the interferometric measurement process, but it has remained experimentally unexplored for many decades. Here, we use whispering-gallery-mode (WGM) optical microresonators …
The conjunction of atom-cavity physics and photonic structures (``solid light'' systems) offers new opportunities in terms of more device functionality and the probing of designed emulators of condensed matter systems. By analogy to the canonical one-electron approximation of solid state physics, we propose a one-polariton approximation to study these systems. Using this approximation we apply Bloch states to the uniformly tuned Jaynes-Cummings-Hubbard model to analytically determine the energy band structure. By analyzing the response of the band structure to local atom-cavity control we expl…
Controlling the interaction between localized optical and mechanical excitations has recently become possible following advances in micro- and nano-fabrication techniques. To date, most experimental studies of optomechanics have focused on measurement and control of the mechanical subsystem through its interaction with optics, and have led to the experimental demonstration of dynamical back-action cooling and optical rigidity of the mechanical system. Conversely, the optical response of these systems is also modified in the presence of mechanical interactions, leading to strong nonlinear effec…
We study the implementation of quantum state transfer protocols in phonon networks, where in analogy to optical networks, quantum information is transmitted through propagating phonons in extended mechanical resonator arrays or phonon waveguides. We describe how the problem of a non-vanishing thermal occupation of the phononic quantum channel can be overcome by implementing optomechanical multi- and continuous mode cooling schemes to create a 'cold' frequency window for transmitting quantum states. In addition, we discuss the implementation of phonon circulators and switchable phonon routers, …
An effective black-hole-like horizon occurs, for electromagnetic waves in matter, at a surface of singular electric and magnetic permeabilities. In a physical dispersive medium this horizon disappears for wave numbers with $k>k_c$. Nevertheless, it is shown that Hawking radiation is still emitted if free field modes with $k>k_c$ are in their ground state.
In this paper we propose a scheme to model the phonon analog of optical elements, including a polarizing beam splitter, a half- wave plate, and a quarter- wave plate, as well as an implementation of CNOT and Pauli gates, by using two atoms confined in a 2D plane. The internal states of the atoms are taken to be Rydberg circular states. Using this model we can manipulate the motional state of the atom, with possible applications in optomechanical integrated circuits for quantum information processing and quantum simulation. Towards this aim, we study the interaction of two trapped atoms with tw…
We theoretically investigate optical bistability, mechanically induced absorption (MIA) and Fano resonance of a hybrid system comprising of a single quantum dot (QD) embedded in a solid state microcavity interacting with the quantized cavity mode and the deformation potential associated with the lattice vibration. We find that the bistability can be tuned by the QD-cavity mode coupling. We further show that the normalized power transmission displays anomalous dispersion indicating that the system can be used to generate slow light. We also demonstrate the possibility of using the system as all…
Controlling the vibrations in solids is crucial to tailor their mechanical properties and their interaction with light. Thermal vibrations represent a source of noise and dephasing for many physical processes at the quantum level. One strategy to avoid these vibrations is to structure a solid such that it possesses a phononic stop band, i.e., a frequency range over which there are no available mechanical modes. Here, we demonstrate the complete absence of mechanical vibrations at room temperature over a broad spectral window, with a 5.3 GHz wide band gap centered at 8.4 GHz in a patterned sili…
