In most optomechanical systems a movable mirror is a part of an optical cavity, and its oscillation modulates either the resonance frequency of the cavity, or its coupling to the environment. There exists the third option -- which we call a "coherent coupling" -- when the mechanical oscillation couples several non-degenerate optical modes supported by the cavity. Identifying the nature of the coupling can be an important step in designing the setup for a specific application. In order to unambiguously distinguish between different optomechanical couplings, we develop a general framework based on the Hamiltonian of the system. Using this framework we give examples of different couplings, and discuss in details one particular case of a purely coherent coupling in a ring cavity with a movable mirror inside. We demonstrate that in certain cases coherent coupling can be beneficial for cooling the motion of the mechanical oscillator. Our general framework allows to approach the design of optomechanical experiments in a methodological way, for precise exploitation of the strengths of particular optomechanical couplings.
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…
It is well-known that some nonlinear phenomena such as strong photon blockade are hard to be observed in optomechanical system with current experimental technology. Here, we present a coherent feedback control strategy in which a linear cavity is coherently controlled by an optomechanical controller in a feedback manner. The coherent feedback loop transfers and enhances quantum nonlinearity from the controller to the controlled cavity, which makes it possible to observe strong nonlinear effects in either linear cavity or optomechanical cavity. More interestingly, we find that the strong photon…
Weak measurement with a coherent state pointer and in combination with an orthogonal postselection can lead to a surprising amplification effect, and we give a fire-new physical mechanism about the weak measurement in order to understand this effect. Moreover, this physical mechanism is a general result and based on it, we present a scheme of optomechanical system to implement weak measurement amplification on an orthogonal postselection.
Coherent quantum noise cancellation (CQNC) can be used in optomechanical sensors to surpass the standard quantum limit (SQL). In this paper, we investigate an optomechanical force sensor that uses the CQNC strategy by cascading the optomechanical system with an all-optical effective negative mass oscillator. Specifically, we analyze matching conditions, losses and compare the two possible arrangements in which either the optomechanical or the negative mass system couples first to light. While both of these orderings yield a sub-SQL performance, we find that placing the effective negative mass …
A theoretical scheme for the realization of the sphere-coherent motional states in an optomechanical cavity in the presence of a two-level atom is proposed. To this end, the analogy between an atom-assisted optomechanical cavity and a laser-driven trapped-ion system is used. This analogy provides us with a theoretical tool to show how sphere-coherent states can be generated for the motional degree of freedom of the macroscopic mechanical oscillator from atom-field-mirror interactions in a multi-mode optomechanical cavity. Some nonclassical properties of the generated state of the mechanical os…
We study the quantum interference between different weak signals in a three-port optomechanical system, which is achieved by coupling three cavity modes to the same mechanical mode. If one cavity serves as a control port and is perturbed continually by a control signal, nonreciprocal quantum interference can be observed when another signal is injected upon different target ports. In particular, we exhibit frequency-independent perfect blockade induced by the completely destructive interference over the full frequency domain. Moreover, coherent photon routing can be realized by perturbing all p…
Most studies for postselected weak measurement in optomechanical system focus on using a single photon as a measured system. However, we find that using weak coherent light instead of a single photon can also amplify the mirror's position displacement of one photon. In the WVA regime (Weak Value Amplification regime), the weak value of one photon can lie outside the eigenvalue spectrum, proportional to the difference of the mirror's position displacement between the successful and failed postselection and its successful postselection probability is dependent of the mean photon number of the co…
We investigate the routing of a single-photon in a modulated cavity optomechanical system, in which the cavity is driven by a strong coupling field, and the mechanical resonator (MR) is modulated with a weak coherent field. We show that, when there is no a weak coherent field modulating the MR, the system cannot act as a single-photon router, since the signal will be completely covered by the quantum and thermal noises. By introducing the weak coherent field, we can achieve the routing of the single-photon by adjusting the frequency of the weak coherent field, and the system can be immune to t…
Coherent control of optomechanical entanglement and steering via dual parametric amplification
School of Physics and Astronomy, Beijing Normal University（北京师范大学物理学院）；Applied Optics Beijing Area Major Laboratory, Beijing Normal University（北京师范大学应用光学北京市重点实验室）；Key Laboratory of Multiscale Spin Physics (Ministry of Education), Beijing Normal University（北京师范大学多尺度自旋物理教育部重点实验室）
Ground-state cooling of mechanical motion by coupling to a driven optical cavity has been demonstrated in various optomechanical systems. In our work, we provide a so far missing thermodynamic performance analysis of optomechanical sideband cooling in terms of a heat valve. As performance quantifiers, we examine not only the lowest reachable effective temperature (phonon number) but also the evacuated-heat flow as an equivalent to the cooling power of a standard refrigerator, as well as appropriate thermodynamic efficiencies, which all can be experimentally inferred from measurements of the ca…
In the few-photon regime, we theoretically propose a feasible scheme to realize strong coupling optomechanical cycle in a three-mode optomechanical circulatory system (OMCS) comprising of cross-Kerr (CK) type and linear coupling between the corresponding two bosonic modes, meanwhile, where one of the bosonic modes is strongly coherently driven and the rest are weakly driven. A Langevin equation for strong three-mode OMCS is derived by adjusting the parameters of the appropriate strong coherent laser. We show that this strong coupling of optomechanical originates from the strong coherently driv…
Using a flowchart representation of quantum optomechanical dynamics, we design coherent quantum-noise-cancellation schemes that can eliminate the back-action noise induced by radiation pressure at all frequencies and thus overcome the standard quantum limit of force sensing. The proposed schemes can be regarded as novel examples of coherent feedforward quantum control.
We propose and analyse a feasible experimental scheme for a quantum force sensor based on the elimination of back-action noise through coherent quantum noise cancellation (CQNC) in a hybrid atom-cavity optomechanical setup assisted with squeezed vacuum injection. The force detector, which allows for a continuous, broad-band detection of weak forces well below the standard quantum limit (SQL), is formed by a single optical cavity simultaneously coupled to a mechanical oscillator and to an ensemble of ultracold atoms. The latter acts as a negative-mass oscillator so that atomic noise cancels exa…
We propose a method to decouple the nanomechanical resonator in optomechanical systems from the environmental noise by introducing a chaotic coherent feedback loop. We find that the chaotic controller in the feedback loop can modulate the dynamics of the controlled optomechanical system and induce a broadband response of the mechanical mode. This broadband response of the mechanical mode will cut off the coupling between the mechanical mode and the environment and thus suppress the environmental noise of the mechanical modes. As an application, we use the protected optomechanical system to act…
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…
Cooling to the motional ground state is an important first step in the preparation of nonclassical states of mesoscopic mechanical oscillators. Light-mediated coupling to a remote atomic ensemble has been proposed as a method to reach the ground state for low frequency oscillators. The ground state can also be reached using optical measurement followed by feedback control. Here we investigate the possibility of enhanced cooling by combining these two approaches. The combination, in general, outperforms either individual technique, though atomic ensemble-based cooling and feedback cooling each …
In this paper, we propose an experimentally viable scheme to enhance the sensitivity of force detection in a hybrid optomechanical setup assisted by squeezed vacuum injection, beyond the standard quantum limit (SQL). The scheme is based on a combination of the coherent quantum noise cancellation (CQNC) strategy with a variational homodyne detection of the cavity output spectrum in which the phase of the local oscillator is optimized. In CQNC, realizing a negative-mass oscillator in the system leads to exact cancellation of the backaction noise from the mechanics due to destructive quantum inte…
We explore theoretically the optical response properties in an optomechanical system under electromagneti- cally induced transparency condition but with the mechanical resonator being driven by an additional coherent field. In this configuration, more complex quantum coherent and interference phenomena occur. In partic- ular, we find that the probe transmission spectra depend on the total phase of the applied fields. Our study also provides an efficient way to control propagation of amplification.
The coherent quantum noise cancellation (CQNC) strategy has been performed in the single-mode optomechanical systems to promote an ultra-sensitive metrology protocol to break the standard quantum limit. The key idea of CQNC is that the backaction noises arising from radiation pressure and driving can be offset by coupling the optical mode to a near-resonant ancillary mode. In this work, a continuous weak-force sensing under CQNC is developed in a double-mode optomechanical system consisted of two optical modes with distinct frequencies and a mechanical mode. In particular, under the asymmetric…
We systematically study the influence of simultaneously modulating the input laser intensity and quantum dot (QD) resonance frequecy on the mean-field dynamics, fluctuation energy transfer and entanglement in a optomechanical semi-conductor resonator embedded with a QD. We show that the modulation and the hybrid system can be engineered to attain the desired mean-field values, control the fluctuation energy transfer and the entanglement between the various degrees of freedom. A remarkably high degree of entanglement can be achieved by modulating only the QD frequency. The interplay between the…
We consider unambiguous identification of coherent states of electromagnetic field. In particular, we study possible generalizations of an optical setup proposed in M. Sedlák {\it et al.}, Phys. Rev. A {\bf 76}, 022326 (2007). We show how the unambiguous identification of coherent states can be performed in a general case when multiple copies of unknown and the reference states are available. We also investigate whether reference states after the measurement can be "recovered" and further used for subsequent unambiguous identification tasks. We show that in spite of the fact that the recovered…
We consider an optomechanical cavity with a movable end-mirror as a quantum mechanical oscillator (MO) containing an interacting cigar-shaped Bose-Eisenstein condensate (BEC). It is assumed that both the MO and the BEC interact with the radiation pressure of the cavity field in the red-detuned and weak coupling regimes while the two-body atomic collisions frequency of the BEC and the mechanical spring coefficient of the MO are coherently modulated. By analyzing the scattering matrix we find that a frequency-dependent squeezing is induced to the three subsystems only due to the coherent modulat…
Preparing macroscopic mechanical resonators close to their motional quantum groundstate and generating entanglement with light offers great opportunities in studying fundamental physics and in developing a new generation of quantum applications. Here we propose an experimentally interesting scheme, which is particularly well suited for systems in the sideband-unresolved regime, based on coherent feedback with linear, passive optical components to achieve groundstate cooling and photon-phonon entanglement generation with optomechanical devices. We find that, by introducing an additional passive…
We demonstrate coherent control of optomechanically induced transparency and Fano resonances in a four mirror macroscopic optomechanical cavity, with two movable mirrors, each driven by an external mechanical pump. The variable control of the amplitude and phase of the coherent mechanical pumps provides a means of tuning the shape and nature of the Fano profiles. Further, our scheme shows the occurrence of tunable optomechanical features, even at very low mechanical driving field amplitudes, in macroscopic optomechanical cavities.
We consider an unambiguous identification of an unknown coherent state with one of two unknown coherent reference states. Specifically, we consider two modes of an electromagnetic field prepared in unknown coherent states alpha_1 and alpha_2, respectively. The third mode is prepared either in the state alpha_1 or in the state alpha_2. The task is to identify (unambiguously) which of the two modes are in the same state. We present a scheme consisting of three beamsplitters capable to perform this task. Although we don't prove the optimality, we show that the performance of the proposed setup is…
We determine the theoretical limits to squeezing-enhanced measurement sensitivity of mechanical motion in a cavity optomechanical system. The motion of a mechanical resonator is transduced onto quadrature fluctuations of a cavity optical field and a measurement is performed on the optical field exiting the cavity. We compare measurement sensitivities obtained with coherent probing and quantum-enhanced probing of the mechanical motion, i.e. the coherent probe field carries vacuum states and quadrature squeezed vacuum states at sideband frequencies, respectively. We find that quantum-enhanced pr…
We analyze the performance of optomechanical cooling of a mechanical resonator in the presence of a degenerate optical parametric amplifier within the optomechanical cavity, which squeezes the cavity light. We demonstrate that this allows to significantly enhance the cooling efficiency via the coherent suppression of Stokes scattering. The enhanced cooling occurs also far from the resolved sideband regime, and we show that this cooling scheme can be more efficient than schemes realized by injecting a squeezed field into the optomechanical cavity.
We propose a novel type of optomechanical coupling which enables a tripartite interaction between a quantum emitter, an optical mode and a macroscopic mechanical oscillator. The interaction uses a mechanism we term mode field coupling: mechanical displacement modifies the spatial distribution of the optical mode field, which in turn modulates the atom-photon coupling rate. In properly designed multimode optomechanical systems, we can achieve situations in which mode field coupling is the only possible interaction pathway for the system. This enables, for example, swapping of a single excitatio…
The polarizations of optical fields, besides field intensities, provide more degrees of freedom to manipulate coherent light-matter interactions. Here we propose how to achieve a coherent switch of optomechanical entanglement in a polarized-light-driven cavity system. We show that by tuning the polarizations of the driving field, the effective optomechanical coupling can be well controlled and, as a result, quantum entanglement between the mechanical oscillator and the optical transverse electric (TE) mode can be coherently and reversibly switched to that between the same phonon mode and the o…
We discuss several methods for unambiguous state discrimination of N symmetric coherent states using linear optics and photodetectors. One type of measurements is shown to be optimal in the limit of small photon numbers for any N. For the special case of N=4 this measurement can be fruitfully used by the receiving end (Bob) in an implementation of the BB84 quantum key distribution protocol using faint laser pulses. In particular, if Bob detects only a single photon the procedure is equivalent to the standard measurement that he would have to perform in a single-photon implementation of BB84, i…
Optomechanical detectors have reached the standard quantum limit in position and force sensing where measurement backaction noise starts to be the limiting factor for the sensitivity. A strategy to circumvent measurement backaction, and surpass the standard quantum limit, has been suggested by M. Tsang and C. Caves in Phys. Rev. Lett. 105 123601 (2010). We provide a detailed analysis of this method and assess its benefits, requirements, and limitations. We conclude that a proof-of-principle demonstration based on a micro-optomechanical system is demanding, but possible. However, for parameters…
Generalized quantum measurements identifying non-orthogonal states without ambiguity often play an indispensable role in various quantum applications. For such unambiguous state discrimination scenario, we have a finite probability of obtaining inconclusive results and minimizing the probability of inconclusive results is of particular importance. In this paper, we experimentally demonstrate an adaptive generalized measurement that can unambiguously discriminate the quaternary phase-shift-keying coherent states with a near-optimal performance. Our scheme is composed of displacement operations,…
Interaction with a thermal environment decoheres the quantum state of a mechanical oscillator. When the interaction is sufficiently strong, such that more than one thermal phonon is introduced within a period of oscillation, quantum coherent oscillations are prevented. This is generally thought to preclude a wide range of quantum protocols. Here, we introduce a pulsed optomechanical protocol that allows ground state cooling, general linear quantum non-demolition measurements, optomechanical state swaps, and quantum state preparation and tomography without requiring quantum coherent oscillation…
The use of linearly independent signal states in realistic implementations of quantum key distribution (QKD) enables an eavesdropper to perform unambiguous state discrimination. We explore quantitatively the limits for secure QKD imposed by this fact taking into account that the receiver can monitor to some extend the photon number statistics of the signals even with todays standard detection schemes. We compare our attack to the beamsplitting attack and show that security against beamsplitting attack does not necessarily imply security against the attack considered here.
We theoretically propose and investigate a feasible experimental scheme for the realization of the dynamical Casimir effect (DCE) in a hybrid optomechanical cavity with a moving end mirror containing an interacting cigar-shaped Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC). We show that in the red-detuned regime of cavity optomechanics together with the weak optomechanical coupling limit by \textit{coherent} modulation of the \textit{s}-wave scattering frequency of the BEC and the mechanical spring coefficient of the mechanical oscillator (MO), the mechanical and atomic quantum vacuum fluctuations are parame…
Hybrid quantum systems have been developed with various mechanical, optical and microwave harmonic oscillators. The coupling produces a rich library of interactions including two mode squeezing, swapping interactions, back-action evasion and thermal control. In a multimode mechanical system, coupling resonators of different scales (both in frequency and mass) leverages the advantages of each resonance. For example: a high frequency, easily manipulated resonator could be entangled with a low frequency massive object for tests of gravitational decoherence. Here we demonstrate coherent optomechan…
We study the quantum dynamics of an optomechanical setup comprising two optical modes and one mechanical mode. We show that the same system can undergo a Dicke-Hepp-Lieb superradiant type phase transition. We found that the coupling between the momentum quadratures of the two optical fields give rise to a new critical point. We show that selective energy exchange between any two modes is possible by coherent control of the coupling parameters. In addition we also demonstrate the occurrence of Normal Mode Splitting (NMS) in the mechanical displacement spectrum.
Quantum control of a system requires the manipulation of quantum states faster than any decoherence rate. For mesoscopic systems, this has so far only been reached by few cryogenic systems. An important milestone towards quantum control is the so-called strong coupling regime, which in cavity optomechanics corresponds to an optomechanical coupling strength larger than cavity decay rate and mechanical damping. Here, we demonstrate the strong coupling regime at room temperature between a levitated silica particle and a high finesse optical cavity. Normal mode splitting is achieved by employing c…
Diamond cavity optomechanical devices hold great promise for quantum technology based on coherent coupling between photons, phonons and spins. These devices benefit from the exceptional physical properties of diamond, including its low mechanical dissipation and optical absorption. However the nanoscale dimensions and mechanical isolation of these devices can make them susceptible to thermo-optic instability when operating at the high intracavity field strengths needed to realize coherent photon--phonon coupling. In this work, we overcome these effects through engineering of the device geometr…
We study the detection of weak coherent forces by means of an optomechanical device formed by a highly reflecting isolated mirror shined by an intense and highly monochromatic laser field. Radiation pressure excites a vibrational mode of the mirror, inducing sidebands of the incident field, which are then measured by heterodyne detection. We determine the sensitivity of such a scheme and show that the use of an entangled input state of the two sideband modes improves the detection, even in the presence of damping and noise acting on the mechanical mode.
Adding excitations on a coherent state provides an effective way to observe nonclassical properties of radiation fields. Here we describe and analyse how to apply this concept to the motional state of a mechanical oscillator and present a full scheme to prepare non-Gaussian {\it phonon}-added coherent states of the mechanical motion in cavity optomechanics. We first generate a mechanical coherent state using electromagnetically induced transparency. We then add a single phonon onto the coherent state via optomechanical parametric down-conversion combined with single photon detection. We valida…
We study the coherent dynamics of an excited two-level atom in a vacuum optomechanical cavity and find that the original atom-cavity Rabi oscillation is sinusoidally modulated by the light-mechanics coupling as the Rabi splitting is on resonance with the mechanical mode. We develop an analytic model in a three-dimensional Hilbert subspace to explain this phenomenon and employ numerical simulations of the density-matrix master equation to confirm our analysis. We also show that the modulated Rabi oscillation survives in presence of dissipations and other non-ideal factors.
We study an optomechanical system in which the mechanical motion of a single trapped ion is coupled to a cavity field for the realization of a strongly quantum correlated two-mode system. We show that for large pump intensities the steady state photon number exhibits bistable behaviour. We further analyze the occurrence of normal mode splitting (NMS) due to mixing of the fluctuations of the cavity field and the fluctuations of the ion motion which indicates a coherent energy exchange. We also find that in the parameter regime where NMS exists, the steady state of the system shows continuous va…
We study the possibility of revealing a weak coherent force by using a pendular mirror as a probe, and coupling this to a radiation field, which acts as the meter, in a cavityless configuration. We determine the sensitivity of such a scheme and show that the use of an entangled meter state greatly improves the ultimate detection limit. We also compare this scheme with that involving an optical cavity.
Strongly driven cavity quantum electrodynamical-optomechanical hybrid system
Laboratory of Photonics and Quantum Measurements (LPQM), Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne (EPFL)（洛桑联邦理工学院光子与量子测量实验室）；Center for Quantum Science and Engineering, EPFL（洛桑联邦理工学院量子科学与工程中心）
We study the physical properties of double-cavity optomechanical system in which the mechanical resonator interacts with one of the coupled cavities and another cavity is used as an auxiliary cavity. The model can be expected to achieve the strong optomechanical coupling strength and overcome the optomechanical cavity decay, simultaneously. Through the coherent auxiliary cavity interferences, the steady-state squeezing of mechanical resonator can be generated in highly unresolved sideband regime. The validity of the scheme is assessed by numerical simulation and theoretical analysis of the ste…
We explore entanglement generation between multiple optically levitated nanospheres interacting with a common optical cavity via the Coherent Scattering optomechanical interaction. We derive the many-particle Hamiltonian governing the unitary evolution of the system and show that it gives rise to quantum correlations among the various partitions of the setup, following a non-Markovian dynamics of entanglement birth, death and revivals. We also consider the effects of coupling the system to external environments and show that under reasonable experimental conditions entanglement between the mec…
Institute of Science and Technology Austria (ISTA)（奥地利科学技术研究所）；Institute for Theoretical Physics, Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen（蒂宾根大学理论物理研究所）；Naturwissenschaftlich-Technische Fakultät, Universität Siegen（锡根大学自然科学技术学院）；Department of Physics and Astronomy, University College London（伦敦大学学院物理与天文系）；ZARM, University of Bremen（不来梅大学ZARM中心）
