We propose a scheme to implement quantum controlled NOT gate and quantum phase gate in an optomechanical system based on phonon blockade. For appropriate choices of system parameters, fidelities of both the quantum gate operations are very close to unity in the absence of dissipation. Using recently achieved experimental values in a mechanical resonator coupled to a microwave cavity, we show that the quantum gate can be realized experimentally with very high fidelity.
The photon blockade effect is commonly exploited in the development of single-photon sources. While the photon blockade effect could be used to prepare high-fidelity single-photon states in idealized regimes, practical implementations in optomechanical systems suffer from an interplay of competing processes. Here we derive a control scheme that exploits destructive interference of Fock state amplitudes of more than one photon. The resulting preparation time for photon-blockaded quantum states is limited only by the optomechanical interaction strength and can thus be orders of magnitude shorter…
Photon blockade is an effective way to generate single photon, which is of great significance in quantum state preparation and quantum information processing. Here we investigate the statistical properties of photons in a double-cavity optomechanical system with nonreciprocal coupling, and explore the photon blockade in the weak and strong coupling regions respectively. To achieve the strong photon blockade, we give the optimal parameter relations under different blockade mechanisms. Moreover, we find that the photon blockades under their respective mechanisms exhibit completely different beha…
The observation of phonon blockade in a nanomechanical oscillator is clear evidence of its quantum nature. However, it is still a severe challenge to measure the strong phonon blockade in an optomechanical system with effective nonlinear coupling. In this paper, we propose a theoretical proposal for detecting the phonon blockade effect in a quadratically coupled optomechanical system by exploiting supervised machine learning. The detected optical signals are injected into the neural network as the input, while the output is the mechanical equal-time second-order correlation. Our results show o…
We propose to mechanically control photon blockades (PB) in an optomechanical system with driving oscillators. We show that by tuning the mechanical driving parameters we achieve selective single-photon blockade (1PB) or two-photon blockade (2PB) as well as simultaneous 1PB and 2PB at the same frequency. This mechanical engineering of 1PB and 2PB can be understood from the anharmonic energy levels due to the modulation of the mechanical driving. In contrast to the optomechanical systems without any mechanical driving featuring PB only for specific optical detuning, our results can be useful fo…
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…
We study photon blockade and anti-bunching in the cavity of an optomechanical system in which the mechanical resonator is coupled to a two-level system (TLS). In particular, we analyze the effects of the coupling strength (to the mechanical mode), transition frequency, and decay rate of TLS on the photon blockade. The statistical properties of the cavity field are affected by the TLS, because the TLS changes the energy-level structure of the optomechanical system via dressed states formed by the TLS and the mechanical resonator. We find that the photon blockade and tunneling can be significant…
We study the effects of parity-time(PT)-symmetry on the photon blockade and distinguish the different blockade mechanisms in a double-cavity optomechanical system. By studying the light statistics of the system, we find the completely different photon blockade behaviors when the PT-symmetry is broken or unbroken, which is related to the PT phase transition. Furthermore, an interesting phenomenon that the two cavities are blocked at the same time is found with the appropriate system parameters. Those statistical phenomenons are all analyzed in detail and demonstrated by analytically solving the…
We study the steady-state photon statistics of a quadratically coupled optomechanical cavity, which is weakly driven by a monochromatic laser field. We examine the photon blockade by evaluating the second-order correlation function of the cavity photons. By restricting the system within the zero-, one-, and two-photon subspace, we obtain an approximate analytical expression for the correlation function. We also numerically investigate the correlation function by solving the quantum master equation including both optical and mechanical dissipations. The results show that, in the deep-resolved-s…
We propose a scheme to enhance the single- and two-photon blockade effect significantly in a standard optomechanical system (OMS) via optical parametric amplification (OPA). The scheme does not rely on the strong single-photon optomechanical coupling and can eliminate the disadvantages of suppressing multi-photon excitation incompletely. Through analyzing the single-photon blockade (1PB) mechanism and optimizing the system parameters, we obtain a perfect 1PB with a high occupancy probability of single-photon excitation, which means that a high quality and efficient single-photon source can be …
Quantum control of phonons has being become a focus of attention for developing quantum technologies. Here, we propose a proposal to realize phonon blockade in a quadratically coupled optomechanical system, where a strong nonlinear interaction between photons and phonons can be induced by an external field coherently driving the cavity, and the effective coupling strength is tunable by adjusting the amplitude of the driving field. This optically induced nonlinearity is different from standard methods for realization of phonon blockade, where the nonlinearity is achieved by coupling the mechani…
We propose how to achieve quantum nonreciprocity via unconventional photon blockade (UPB) in a compound device consisting of an optical harmonic resonator and a spinning optomechanical resonator. We show that, even with an extremely weak single-photon nonlinearity, nonreciprocal UPB can emerge in this system, i.e., strong photon antibunching can emerge only by driving the device from one side, but not from the other side. This nonreciprocity results from the Fizeau drag, leading to different splitting of the resonance frequencies for the counter-circulating modes. Such nonreciprocal quantum UP…
The hybrid microwave optomechanical-magnetic system has recently emerged as a promising candidate for coherent information processing because of the ultrastrong microwave photon-magnon coupling and the longlife of the magnon and phonon. As a quantum information processing device, the realization of a single excitation holds special meaning for the hybrid system. In this paper, we introduce a single two-level atom into the optomechanical-magnetic system and show that an unconventional blockade due to destructive interference cannot offer a blockade of both the photon and magnon. Meanwhile, unde…
Phonon nonlinearities play an important role in hybrid quantum networks and on-chip quantum devices. We investigate the phonon statistics of a mechanical oscillator in hybrid systems composed of an atom and one or two standard optomechanical cavities. An efficiently enhanced atom-phonon interaction can be derived via a tripartite atom-photon-phonon interaction, where the atom-photon coupling depends on the mechanical displacement without practically changing a cavity frequency. This novel mechanism of optomechanical interactions, as predicted recently by Cotrufo et al. [Phys. Rev. Lett. 118, 1…
We analyze the photon statistics of a weakly driven optomechanical system and discuss the effect of photon blockade under single photon strong coupling conditions. We present an intuitive interpretation of this effect in terms of displaced oscillator states and derive analytic expressions for the cavity excitation spectrum and the two photon correlation function $g^{(2)}(0)$. Our results predict the appearance of non-classical photon correlations in the combined strong coupling and sideband resolved regime, and provide a first detailed understanding of photon-photon interactions in strong coup…
We propose to manipulate the statistic properties of the photons transport nonreciprocally via quadratic optomechanical coupling. We present a scheme to generate quadratic optomechanical interactions in the normal optical modes of a whispering-gallery-mode (WGM) optomechanical system by eliminating the linear optomechanical couplings via anticrossing of different modes. By optically pumping the WGM optomechanical system in one direction, the effective quadratic optomechanical coupling in that direction will be enhanced significantly, and nonreciprocal photon blockade will be observed consequen…
Photon statistics in a weakly driven optomechanical photonic crystal cavity, with Kerr-type nonlinearity, is analyzed both analytically and numerically. Single-photon blockade effect is demonstrated via calculations of the zero-time-delay second-order correlation function $g^{(2)}(0)$. The analytical results obtained by solving the Schrödinger equation are in complete conformity with the results obtained through numerical solution of the quantum master equation. The experimental feasibility with state-of-the-art device parameters is discussed. It is observed that photon blockade could be gener…
In contrast to recent studies [Rabl, Phys. Rev. Lett. 107, 063601 (2011); Nunnenkamp et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 107, 063602 (2011)] on photon blockade that prevents subsequent photons from resonantly entering the cavity in optomechanical systems, we study the photon-induced tunneling that increases the probability of admitting subsequent photons in those systems. In particular, we analytically and numerically show how twoor three-photon tunneling can occur by avoiding single-photon blockade. Our study provides another way on photon control using a single mechanical resonator in optomechanical sy…
We show that in laser-driven coupled optomechanical systems, photon antibunching can occur under weak optomechanical coupling, contrarily to common expectation. This unconventional photon blockade originates from destructive quantum interference between different excitation pathways bringing from the ground to two-photon states. Using a quantum open-system approach, we study the antibunching as a function of driving field amplitude, temperature, and pure dephasing rate, and derive optimal values of the system parameters for its occurrence. These values are remarkably close to those characteriz…
In a hybrid optomechanical setup consisting of a two-level atom in a cavity with a pendular end-mirror, the interplay between the light field's radiation pressure on the mirror and the dipole interaction with the atom can lead to a blockade effect, which manifests itself in a suppression of Rabi oscillations in the atomic population. This effect is present when the system is in the single photon strong coupling regime and has an analogy in the photon blockade of optomechanics.
We propose a novel scheme for realizing single-photon blockade in a weakly driven hybrid cavity optomechanical system consisting of a nonlinear photonic crystal. Sub-Poissonian statistics is realized even when the single-photon optomechanical coupling strength is smaller than the decay rate of the optical mode. The scheme relaxes the requirement of strong coupling for photon blockade in optomechanical systems. It is shown that photon blockade could be generated at the telecommunication wavelength.
We study the photon-blockade effect in a loop-coupled optomechanical system consisting of two cavity modes and one mechanical mode. Here, the mechanical mode is optomechanically coupled to the two cavity modes, which are coupled with each other via a photon-hopping interaction. By treating the photon-hopping interaction as a perturbation, we obtain the analytical results of the eigenvalues and eigenstates of the system in the subspaces associated with zero, one, and two photons. We find a phenomenon of optical normal-mode-induced phonon-sideband splitting in the photon-blockade effect by analy…
The properties of open quantum system in quantum information science is now extensively investigated more generally by the research community as a fundamental issue for a variety of applications. Usually, the states of the open quantum system might be disturbed by the decoherence which will reduce the fidelity in the quantum information processing. So it is better to eliminate the influence of the environment. However, as part of the composite system, rational use of the environment system could be beneficial to quantum information processing. Here we theoretically studied the environment indu…
We study a hybrid semiconductor-optomechanical system, which consists of a cavity with an oscillating mirror made by semiconducting materials or with a semiconducting membrane inside. The cavity photons and the excitons in the oscillating mirror or semiconducting membrane form into polaritons. And correspondingly, the optomechanical interaction between the cavity photons and the mirror or membrane is changed into the polariton-mechanical interaction. We theoretically study the eigenenergies and eigenfunctions of this tripartite hybrid system with the generalized rotating-wave approximation. We…
Because of their low energy content, microwave signals at the single-photon level are extremely challenging to measure. Guided by recent progress in single-photon optomechanics and hybrid optomechanical systems, we propose a multimode optomechanical transducer that can detect intensities significantly below the single-photon level via adiabatic transfer of the microwave signal to the optical frequency domain where the measurement is then performed. The influence of intrinsic quantum and thermal fluctuations is also discussed.
We propose to synthesize arbitrary nonclassical motional states in optomechanical systems by using sideband excitations and photon blockade. We first demonstrate that the Hamiltonian of the optomechanical systems can be reduced, in the strong single-photon optomechanical coupling regime when the photon blockade occurs, to one describing the interaction between a driven two-level trapped ion and the vibrating modes, and then show a method to generate target states by using a series of classical pulses with desired frequencies, phases, and durations. We further analyze the effect of the photon l…
We develop a quantum mechanical method of measuring the Newtonian constant of gravitation, G. In this method, an optomechanical system consisting of two cavities and two membrane resonators is used. The added source mass would induce the shifts of the eigenfrequencies of the supermodes. Via detecting the shifts, we can perform our measurement of G. Furthermore, our system can features exceptional point (EP) which are branch point singularities of the spectrum and eigenfunctions. In the paper, we demonstrate that operating the system at EP can enhance our measurement of G. In addition, we deriv…
We study photon, phonon statistics and the cross-correlation between photons and phonons in a quadratically coupled optomechanical system. Photon blockade, phonon blockade and strongly anticorrelated photons and phonons can be observed in the same parameter regime with the effective nonlinear coupling between the optical and mechanical modes, enhanced by a strong optical driving field. Interestingly, an optimal value of the effective nonlinear coupling strength for the photon blockade is not within the strong nonlinear coupling regime. This abnormal phenomenon results from the destructive inte…
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 describe a novel type of blockade in a hybrid mode generated by linear coupling of photonic and phononic modes. We refer to this effect as hybrid photon-phonon blockade and show how it can be generated and detected in a driven nonlinear optomechanical superconducting system. Thus, we study boson-number correlations in the photon, phonon, and hybrid modes in linearly coupled microwave and mechanical resonators with a superconducting qubit inserted in one of them. We find such system parameters for which we observe eight types of different combinations of either blockade or tunnelling effects…
Strong quantum nonlinearity gives rise to many interesting quantum effects and has wide applications in quantum physics. Herewe investigate the quantum nonlinear effect of an optomechanical system (OMS) consisting of both linear and quadratic coupling. Interestingly, a controllable optomechanical nonlinearity is obtained by applying a driving laser into the cavity. This controllable optomechanical nonlinearity can be enhanced into a strong coupling regime, even if the system is initially in the weak-coupling regime. Moreover, the system dissipation can be suppressed effectively, which allows t…
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…
We present a novel discrete-variable quantum teleportation scheme using pulsed optomechanics. In our proposal, we demonstrate how an unknown optical input state can be transferred onto the joint state of a pair of mechanical oscillators, without physically interacting with one another. We further analyze how experimental imperfections will affect the fidelity of the teleportation and highlight how our scheme can be realized in current state-of-the-art optomechanical systems.
Engineering strong single-photon optomechanical couplings is crucial for optomechanical systems. Here, we propose a hybrid quantum system consisting of a nanobeam (phonons) coupled to a spin ensemble and a cavity (photons) to overcome it. Utilizing the critical property of the lower-branch polariton (LBP) formed by the ensemble-phonon interaction, the LBP-cavity coupling can be greatly enhanced by three orders magnitude of the original one, while the upper-branch polariton (UBP)-cavity coupling is fully suppressed. Our proposal breaks through the condition of the coupling strength less than th…
In a hybrid micromaser system consisting of an optical cavity with a moving mirror connected to a low temperature thermal bath, we demonstrate, both analytically and numerically, that for certain interaction times between a random atomic flux and the optomechanical cavity, vacuum phonon trapping states are generated. Furthermore, under the approach of the master equation with independent phonon and photon thermal baths, we show that the trapping of the phonons and photons is achieved for the same interaction times. The results also indicate that by increasing the cavity-oscillator coupling one…
Optically coupled optomechanical oscillators has turned out to be a versatile experimental resource for exploring optomechanical synchronizations and correlations. In this work, we investigate the phenomena of quantum synchronization and quantum correlations in two optically coupled optomechanical oscillators with two different topologies. In one case the oscillators are coupled with optical photons in a reversible manner, termed as bidirectional coupling, while in the other photons are allowed to enter to the other oscillator but not allowed to exchanged back in the opposite direction, termed…
We propose a realistic system with separated optical and mechanical degrees of freedom, in which a high-mechanical-quality silicon nitride membrane is placed upon a high-optical-quality whispering gallery microcavity. The strongly enhanced linear optomechanical coupling, together with simultaneously low optical and mechanical losses in the present system, results in a remarkable single-photon cooperativity exceeding 300. This unprecedented cooperativity in the optomechanical system enables optical nonlinearity at low light intensities and holds great potential in generating, storing, and imple…
We propose to realize microwave quantum illumination in weak coupling regime based on multimode optomechanical systems. In our proposal the multimode together with a frequency-mismatch process could reduce mechanical thermal noise. Therefore, we achieve a significant reduction of error probability than conventional detector in weak coupling regime. Moreover, we optimize the signal-to-noise ratio for limited bandwidth by tuning the delay time of entangled wave-packets.
We investigate a hybrid electro-optomechanical system that allows us to obtain controllable strong Kerr nonlinearities in the weak-coupling regime. We show that when the controllable electromechanical subsystem is close to its quantum critical point, strong photon-photon interactions can be generated by adjusting the intensity (or frequency) of the microwave driving field. Nonlinear optical phenomena, such as the appearance of the photon blockade and the generation of nonclassical states (e.g., Schrödinger cat states), are predicted in the weak-coupling regime, which is feasible for most curre…
We propose a mechanism to engineer an $n$-photon blockade in a nonlinear cavity with an $n$-photon parametric drive $λ(\hat{a}^{†n}+\hat{a}^n)$. When an $n$-photon-excitation resonance condition is satisfied, the presence of n photons in the cavity suppresses the absorption of the subsequent photons. To confirm the validity of this proposal, we study the n-photon blockade in an atom-cavity system, a Kerr-nonlinear resonator, and two-coupled Kerr nonlinear resonators. Our results demonstrate that $n$-photon bunching and $(n+1)$-photon antibunching can be simultaneously obtained in these systems…
Entanglement had played a crucial role in developing frontier technologies as a critical resource, for instance, in quantum teleportation and quantum sensing schemes. Notably, thanks to the ability to cool down the vibrational modes of mechanical oscillators to its quantum regime, entanglement between mechanical modes and the production of nonclassical mechanical states have emerged as central resources for quantum technological applications. Thus, proposing deterministic schemes to achieve those tasks is of paramount importance. While the dominant scheme for bipartite mechanical entanglement …
We propose a technique for robust optomechanical state transfer using phase-tailored composite pulse driving with constant amplitude. Our proposal is inspired by coherent control techniques in lossless driven qubits. We demonstrate that there exist optimal phases for maximally robust excitation exchange in lossy strongly-driven optomechanical state transfer. In addition, our proposed composite phase driving also protects against random variations in the parameters of the system. However, this driving can take the system out of its steady state. For this reason, we use the ideal optimal phases …
A proposal for the generation of singlet states of three $Λ$-type Rydberg atoms is presented. The singlet state is prepared through the combination of a Rydberg state and an EPR pair, and the scheme relies on the Rydberg blockade effect which prevents the simultaneous excitation of the two atoms to a Rydberg state. In addition, some frequency detuning between lasers and atomic transitions is set to eliminate the degenerate of the two ground states. And finally, a series of numerical simulations are made to show the feasibility of the scheme.
Manipulating photons is an essential technique in quantum communication and computation. Combining the Raman electromagnetically induced transparency technology, we show that the photon blockade behavior can be actively controlled by using an external control field in a two atoms cavity-QED system. As a result, a versatile photon gateway can be achieved in this system, which changes the cavity photons from classical to quantum property and allows one photon, two photon and classical field leaking from the cavity. The proposal presented here has many potential applications for quantum informati…
Mechanical oscillators which respond to radiation pressure are a promising means of transferring quantum information between light and matter. Optical--mechanical state swaps are a key operation in this setting. Existing proposals for optomechanical state swap interfaces are only effective in the resolved sideband limit. Here, we show that it is possible to fully and deterministically exchange mechanical and optical states outside of this limit, in the common case that the cavity linewidth is larger than the mechanical resonance frequency. This high-bandwidth interface opens up a significantly…
We present an experimental proposal to achieve a strong photon blockade by employing electromagnetically induced transparency (EIT) with single alkaline-earth-metal atom trapped in an optical cavity. In the presence of optical Stark shift, both second-order correlation function and cavity transmission exhibit asymmetric structures between the red and blue sidebands of the cavity. For a weak control field, the photon quantum statistics for the coherent transparency window (i.e. atomic quasi-dark state resonance) are insensitive to the Stark shift, which should also be immune to the spontaneous …
We propose a reliable scheme to realize a generalized ultrastrong optomechanical coupling in a two-mode cross-Kerr-type coupled system, where one of the bosonic modes is strongly driven. The effective optomechanical interaction takes the form of a product of the photon number operator of one mode and the quadrature operator of the other mode. The coupling strength and quadrature phase are both tunable via the driving field. The coupling strength can be strongly enhanced to reach the ultrastrong-coupling regime, where the few-photon optomechanical effects such as photon blockade and macroscopic…
We discuss the implementation of optical quantum networks where the interface between stationary and photonic qubits is realized by optomechanical transducers [K. Stannigel et al., PRL 105, 220501 (2010)]. This approach does not rely on the optical properties of the qubit and thereby enables optical quantum communication applications for a wide range of solid-state spin- and charge-based systems. We present an effective description of such networks for many qubits and give a derivation of a state transfer protocol for long-distance quantum communication. We also describe how to mediate local o…
We analyse a proposal that we have recently put forward for an interface between matter-wave and optomechanical technologies from the perspective of macroscopic quantumness. In particular, by making use of a measure of macroscopicity in quantum superpositions that is particularly well suited for continuous variables systems, we demonstrate the existence of working points for our interface at which a quantum mechanical superposition of genuinely mesoscopic states is achieved. Our proposal thus holds the potential to affirm itself as a viable atom-to-mechanics transducer of quantum coherences.
We propose a scheme for controlling interactions between Rydberg-excited neutral atoms in order to perform a fast high-fidelity quantum gate. Unlike dipole-blockade mechanisms already found in the literature, we drive resonantly the atoms with a state-dependent excitation to Rydberg levels, and we exploit the resulting dipole-dipole interaction to induce a controlled atomic motion in the trap, in a similar way as discussed in recent ion-trap quantum computing proposals. This leads atoms to gain the required gate phase, which turns out to be a combination of a dynamic and a geometrical contribu…
Realizing quantum mechanical behavior in micro- and nanomechanical resonators has attracted continuous research effort. One of the ways for observing quantum nature of mechanical objects is via the mechanism of phonon blockade. Here, we show that phonon blockade could be achieved in a system of two weakly nonlinear mechanical resonators coupled by a Coulomb interaction. The optimal blockade arises as a result of the destructive quantum interference between paths leading to two-phonon excitation. It is observed that, in comparison to a single drive applied on one mechanical resonator, driving b…
We combine matter-wave interferometry and cavity optomechanics to propose a coherent matter--light interface based on mechanical motion at the quantum level. We demonstrate a mechanism that is able to transfer non-classical features imprinted on the state of a matter-wave system to an optomechanical device, transducing them into distinctive interference fringes. This provides a reliable tool for the inference of quantum coherence in the particle beam. Moreover, we discuss how our system allows for intriguing perspectives, paving the way to the construction of a device for the encoding of quant…
