The optomechanical state transfer protocol provides effective, lossy, quantum beam-splitter-like dynamics where the strength of the coupling between the electromagnetic and mechanical modes is controlled by the optical steady-state amplitude. By restricting to a subspace with no losses, we argue that the transition from mode-hybridization in the strong coupling regime to the damped-dynamics in the weak coupling regime, is a signature of the passive parity-time ($\mathcal{PT}$) symmetry breaking transition in the underlying non-Hermitian quantum dimer. We compare the dynamics generated by the quantum open system (Langevin or Lindblad) approach to that of the $\mathcal{PT}$-symmetric Hamiltonian, to characterize the cases where the two are identical. Additionally, we numerically explore the evolution of separable and correlated number states at zero temperature as well as thermal initial state evolution at room temperature. Our results provide a pathway for realizing non-Hermitian Hamiltonians in optomechanical systems at a quantum level.
The Lindblad form of the master equation has proven to be one of the most convenient ways to describe the impact of an environment interacting with a quantum system of interest. For single systems the jump operators characterizing these interactions usually take simple forms with a clear interpretation. However, for coupled systems these operators take significantly different forms and the full dynamics cannot be described by jump operators acting on the individual subsystems only. In this work, we investigate the differences between a common phenomenological model for the master equation and …
Open-system dynamics play a key role in the experimental and theoretical study of cavity optomechanical systems. In many cases, the quantum Langevin equations have enabled excellent models for optical decoherence, yet a master-equation approach to the fully nonlinear optomechanical Hamiltonian has thus far proven more elusive. To address this outstanding question and broaden the mathematical tool set available, we derive a solution to the Lindblad master equation that models optical decoherence for a system evolving with the nonlinear optomechanical Hamiltonian. The method combines a Lie-algeb…
We theoretically investigate the emission spectrum of an optomechanical Tavis-Cummings model: two dipole-dipole interacting atoms coupled to an optomechanical cavity (OMC). In particular, we study the influence of dipole-dipole interaction (DDI) on the single-photon spectrum emitted by this hybrid system in the presence of a strong atom-cavity as well as strong optomechanical interaction (hereinafter called the strong-strong coupling). We also show that our analysis is amenable to inclusion of mechanical losses (under the weak mechanical damping limit) and single-photon loss through spontaneou…
We theoretically study the dynamics of typical optomechanical systems, consisting of a passive optical mode and an active mechanical mode, in the $\mathcal{PT}$- and broken-$\mathcal{PT}$-symmetric regimes. By fully analytical treatments for the dynamics of the average displacement and particle numbers, we reveal the phase diagram under different conditions and the various regimes of both $\mathcal{PT}$-symmetry and stability of the system. We find that by appropriately tuning either mechanical gain or optomechanical coupling, both phase transitions of the $\mathcal{PT}$-symmetry and stability…
We present a closed-form analytical solution to the eigenvalue problem of the Liouville operator generating the dissipative dynamics of the standard optomechanical system. The corresponding Lindblad master equation describes the dynamics of a single-mode field inside an optical cavity coupled by radiation pressure to its moving mirror. The optical field and the mirror are in contact with separate environments, which are assumed at zero and finite temperature, respectively. The optomechanical damping basis refers to the exact set of eigenvectors of the generator that, together with the exact ei…
$\mathcal{PT}$-symmetry-breaking enhanced cavity optomechanical magnetometer is proposed, which is achieved by monitoring the change of intensity of a nonlinear four-wave mixing (FWM) process in a gain-cavity-assisted cavity optomechanical system (COMS). Compared with the traditional single loss COMS, the FWM intensity can be enhanced by two orders of magnitude when the gain-cavity-assisted COMS operates at the $\mathcal{PT}$-symmetry-breaking phase. Meanwhile, the sensitivity of magnetic field sensing can be increased from $10^{-9}$T to $10^{-11}$T. This originally comes from the fact that th…
We consider a measurement of the position of a spot painted on the surface of a trapped nano-optomechanical sphere. The measurement extracts information about the position of the spot and in doing so measures a combination of the orientation and position of the sphere. The quantum back-action of the measurement entangles and correlates these two degrees of freedom. Such a measurement is not available for atoms or ions, and provides a mechanism to probe the quantum mechanical properties of trapped optomechanical spheres. In performing simulations of this measurement process we also test a numer…
We show how strong steady-state entanglement can be achieved in a three-mode optomechanical system (or other parametrically-coupled bosonic system) by using one of the modes as a cold reservoir to effectively laser-cool a delocalized Bogoliubov mode. This approach allows one to surpass the bound on the maximum stationary intracavity entanglement possible with a coherent two-mode squeezing interaction. Unlike typical dissipative entanglement schemes, the entangling dynamics here are most effective in a regime where the effects of the engineered reservoir cannot be described by a Markovian Lindb…
We study the phonon dynamics in lattices of optomechanical resonators where the mutually coupled photonic modes are coherently driven and the mechanical resonators are uncoupled and connected to independent thermal baths. We present a general procedure to obtain the effective Lindblad dynamics of the phononic modes for an arbitrary lattice geometry, where the light modes play the role of an effective reservoir that mediates the phonon nonequilibrium dynamics. We show how to stabilize stationary states exhibiting directional heat currents over arbitrary distance, despite the absence of thermal …
We study a dissipative, mechanically coupled optomechanical system that accommodates gain and loss. The gain (loss) is engineered by driven a purely dispersive optomechanical cavity with a blue-detuned (red-detuned) electromagnetic field. By taking into account the dissipative coupling, the Exceptional Point (EP), which is the $\mathcal{PT}-$symmetry phase transition, occurs at low threshold driving strength compared to the purely dispersive system. In the linear regime, the $\mathcal{PT}-$symmetry is unbroken and the dissipative coupling induces strong coupling between the mechanical resonato…
We propose how to achieve synthetic $\mathcal{PT}$ symmetry in optomechanics without using any active medium. We find that harnessing the Stokes process in such a system can lead to the emergence of exceptional point (EP), i.e., the coalescing of both the eigenvalues and the eigenvectors of the system. By encircling the EP, both non-reciprocal optical amplification and chiral mode switching can be achieved. As a result, our synthetic $\mathcal{PT}$-symmetric optomechanics works as a topological optomechanical amplifier. This provides a surprisingly simplified route to realize $\mathcal{PT}$-sy…
We study theoretically an optical cavity and a parity-time ($\mathcal{PT}$)-symmetric pair of mechanical resonators, where all oscillators are pairwise coupled, forming an optomechanical system with a closed-contour interaction. Due to the presence of both gain and feedback, we explore its stability and the root loci over a wide coupling range. Under the red-sideband pumping and for the so-called $\mathcal{PT}$-unbroken phase it displays a double optomechanically induced transparency (OMIT) for an experimentally realizable parameter set. We show that both the transmission amplitude and the gro…
We investigate parity-time ($\mathcal{PT}$) phase transitions in open quantum systems and discuss a criterion of Liouvillian $\mathcal{PT}$ symmetry proposed recently by Huber \textit{et al}. [J. Huber \textit{et al}., SciPost Phys. $\textbf{9}$, 52 (2020)]. Using the third quantization, which is a general method to solve the Lindblad equation for open quadratic systems, we show, with a proposed criterion of $\mathcal{PT}$ symmetry, that the eigenvalue structure of the Liouvillian clearly changes at the $\mathcal{PT}$ symmetry breaking point for an open 2-spin model with exactly balanced gain …
We theoretically study a strongly-driven optomechanical system which consists of a passive optical cavity and an active mechanical resonator. When the optomechanical coupling strength is varied, phase transitions, which are similar those observed in $\mathcal{PT}$-symmetric systems, are observed. We show that the optical transmission can be controlled by changing the gain of the mechanical resonator and loss of the optical cavity mode. Especially, we find that: (i) for balanced gain and loss, optical amplification and absorption can be tuned by changing the optomechanical coupling strength thr…
An optical field inside a Fabry-Perot cavity would exhibit multistability either when an atomic medium, acting as a classical dielectric, is filled into the cavity or when the cavity becomes optomechanical where one reflecting end becomes movable. An external laser is essential in both cases to drive the cavity mode out of the zero equilibrium state. We study the equilibrium states of an atom-filled optomechanical cavity, where the atoms are considered a collective two-level systems as well as an active component that replaces the role of the driving laser. Multistability is found when the ato…
We study the energy-level evolution and ground-state cooling of mechanical resonators under a synthetic phononic gauge field. The tunable gauge phase is mediated by the phase difference between the $\mathcal{PT}$- and anti-$\mathcal{PT}$-symmetric mechanical couplings in a multimode optomechanical system. The transmission spectrum then exhibits the asymmetric Fano line shape or double optomechanically induced transparency by modulating the gauge phase. Moreover, the eigenvalues will collapse and become degenerate although the mechanical coupling is continuously increased. Such counterintuitive…
A system of $N$ spin-1/2 particles interacting with a thermal reservoir is used as a pedagogical example for advanced undergraduate and graduate students. We introduce and illustrate some methods, approximations, and phenomena related to dissipation and nonlinearity in many-particle physics. We start our analysis from the dynamical Sudarshan-Lindblad quantum master equation for the density operator of a system $\mathcal{S}$ interacting with a thermal reservoir $\mathcal{R}$. We derive the quantum version of the so-called Bogoliubov-Born-Green-Kirkwood-Yvon (BBGKY) equations such that the maste…
Multipartite quantum entanglement in $\mathcal{PT}$-symmetric molecular optomechanics: Nonreciprocal enhancement and thermal resilience to \SI{500}{\kelvin}
A direct algebraic proof for the non-positivity of Liouvillian spectral values and controlling the dissipative gap of systems with normal Lindblad operators
Dartmouth College（达特茅斯学院）；Duke University（杜克大学）；University of Maryland, College Park（马里兰大学帕克分校）
We study steady-state continuous variable entanglement in a three-mode optomechanical system consisting of an active optical cavity (gain) coupled to a passive optical cavity (loss) supporting a mechanical mode. For a driving laser which is blue-detuned, we show that coupling between optical and mechanical modes is enhanced in the unbroken-$\mathcal{PT}$-symmetry regime. We analyze the stability and this shows that steady-state solutions are more stable in the gain and loss systems. We use these stable solutions to generate distant entanglement between the mechanical mode and the optical field…
Although people have already artificially formed parity--time ($\mathcal{PT}$) symmetry with gain and loss in a balanced manner, it is still a defect that the gain is restricted to semi--classical but not full quantum. Here we propose and analyze a theoretical scheme to realize full quantum oscillator $\mathcal{PT}$--symmetry. The quantum gain is provided by a dissipation optical cavity with blue detuned laser field. After adiabatically eliminating the cavity modes, we give an effective master equation, which is a more complete quantum description compared with non--Hermitian Hamiltonian, to r…
We study the Lindblad master equation in the space of operators and provide simple criteria for closeness of the hierarchy of equations for correlations. We separately consider the time evolution of closed and open systems and show that open systems satisfying the closeness conditions are not necessary of Gaussian type. In addition, we show that dissipation can induce the closeness of the hierarchy of correlations in interacting quantum systems. As an example we study an interacting optomechanical model, the Fermi-Hubbard model, and the Rabi model, all coupled to a fine-tuned Markovian environ…
We demonstrate a $\mathcal{PT}$-symmetry-breaking chaos in optomechanical system (OMS), which features an ultralow driving threshold. In principle, this chaos will emerge once a driving laser is applied to the cavity mode and lasts for a period of time. The driving strength is inversely proportional to the starting time of chaos. This originally comes from the dynamical enhancement of nonlinearity by field localization in $\mathcal{PT}$-symmetry-breaking phase ($\mathcal{PT}$BP). Moreover, this chaos is switchable by tuning the system parameters so that a $\mathcal{PT}$-symmetry phase transiti…
We develop a rigorous theoretical framework for interaction-induced phenomena in the waveguide quantum electrodynamics (QED) driven by mechanical oscillations of the qubits. Specifically, we predict that the simplest set-up of two qubits, harmonically trapped over an optical waveguide, enables the ultrastrong coupling regime of the quantum optomechanical interaction. Moreover, the combination of the inherent open nature of the system and the strong optomechanical coupling leads to emerging parity-time (\PT) symmetry, quite unexpected for a purely quantum system without artificially engineered …
This study aims to provide evidence regarding the emergence of a class of dissipative time crystals when $\mathcal{PT}$ symmetry of the systems is restored in collective spin systems with Lindblad dynamics. First, we show that a standard model of boundary time crystals (BTCs) satisfies the Liouvillian $\mathcal{PT}$ symmetry, and prove that BTC exists only when the stationary state is $\mathcal{PT}$ symmetric in the large-spin limit. Also, a similar statement is confirmed numerically for another BTC model. In addition, the mechanism of the appearance of BTCs is discussed through the developmen…
Open classical and quantum systems with effective parity-time ($\mathcal{PT}$) symmetry, over the past five years, have shown tremendous promise for advances in lasers, sensing, and non-reciprocal devices. And yet, how such effective $\mathcal{PT}$-symmetric non-Hermitian models emerge out of Hermitian quantum mechanics is not well understood. Here, starting from a fully Hermitian microscopic Hamiltonian description, we show that a non-Hermitian Hamiltonian emerges naturally in a double-quantum-dot-circuit-QED (DQD-circuit QED) set-up, which can be controllably tuned to the $\mathcal{PT}$-symm…
