In the framework of the nonsecular perturbation theory based on the Bogoliubov averaging method, an optomechanical system with an asymmetric anharmonic mechanical resonator is studied. The cross-Kerr interaction and the Kerr-like self-interaction of photons and vibration quanta arise in the Hamiltonian. These interactions are induced by both cubic and quartic nonlinearities of oscillations of the mechanical resonator and the cavity-resonator interaction that is linear in mechanical displacements. We demonstrate a bistable behavior of the number of vibration quanta and find that this behavior is controlled by the cross-Kerr interaction. It is shown that, without driving and dissipation, the constructed superposition Yurke-Stoler-like states of the cavity (or the mechanical resonator) disentangle at certain times the entangled modes of the system. The obtained results offer new possibilities for control of optomechanical systems with asymmetric mechanical oscillations.
We study self-oscillations of an optomechanical system, where coherent mechanical oscillations are induced by a driven optical or microwave cavity, for the case of an anharmonic mechanical oscillator potential. A semiclassical analytical model is developed to characterize the limit cycle for large mechanical amplitudes corresponding to a weak nonlinearity. As a result, we predict conditions to achieve subpoissonian phonon statistics in the steady state, indicating classically forbidden behavior. We compare with numerical simulations and find very good agreement. Our model is quite general and …
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…
In this paper, we investigate theoretically the quantum state transfer in a laser driven hybrid optomechanical cavity with two Duffing-like anharmonic movable end mirrors containing an ensemble of identical two-level trapped atoms. The quantum state transfer from the Bogoliubov modes of the two anharmonic oscillators to the atomic mode results in the atomic quadrature squeezing beyond the standard quantum limit of 3 dB which can be controlled by both the optomechanical and atom-field coupling strengths. Interestingly, the generated atomic squeezing can be made robust against the noise sources …
Introducing a Kerr medium in a cavity coupled to a harmonically moving mirror, we reproduce known and solvable interactions such as two-coupled harmonic oscillators and ion-laser like interactions for specific conditions. This is achieved by a unitary transformation allowing us to tune off the Kerr medium in order to simplify the Hamiltonian.
In this paper, we study theoretically a hybrid optomechanical system consisting of a degenerate optical parametric amplifier inside a driven optical cavity with a moving end mirror which is modeled as a stiffening Duffing-like anharmonic quantum mechanical oscillator. By providing analytical expressions for the critical values of the system parameters corresponding to the emergence of the multistability behavior in the steady-state response of the system, we show that the stiffening mechanical Duffing anharmonicity reduces the width of the multistability region while the optical parametric non…
We investigate the nature of the three-mode interaction inside an optomechanically-active microtoroid with a sizeable chi^(2) coefficient. Experimental techniques are quickly advancing to the point where structures with the necessary properties can be made, and we argue that these provide a natural setting in which to observe rich dynamics leading, for instance, to genuine tripartite steady-state entanglement. We also show that this approach lends itself to a full characterisation of the three-mode state of the system.
We analyze the strong-coupling dynamics of a driven harmonic oscillator whose energy is modulated by a continuum of other bosonic modes. This type of system-bath interaction appears, for example, in optomechanical or equivalent circuit QED setups, where the frequency of a confined photonic mode depends linearly on a fluctuating boundary. Compared to the canonical spin-boson model, where coupling to bath modes only leads to decoherence, the role of the environment in such systems is more complex, since it also provides the only source of nonlinearity. We show that even for an unstructured bath,…
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 study the full field and frequency filtered output photon statistics of a resonator in thermal equilibrium with a bath and containing an arbitrarily large quartic nonlinearity. According to the general theory of photodetection, we derive general input-output relations valid for the ultra-anharmonic regime, where the nonlinearity becomes comparable to the energy of the resonator, and show how the emission properties are modified as compared to the generally assumed simple anharmonic regime. We analyse the impact of the nonlinearity on the full statistics of the emission and its spectral prop…
We demonstrate that a geometric phase, generated via a sequence of four optomechanical interactions, can be used to increase, or generate nonlinearities in the unitary evolution of a mechanical resonator. Interactions of this form lead to new mechanisms for preparing mechanical squeezed states, and preparation of non-classical states with significant Wigner negativity.
High-Q microwave cavity modes coupled to transmon ancillas provide a hardware-efficient platform for quantum computing. Due to their coupling, the cavity modes inherit finite nonlinearity from the transmons. In this work, we theoretically and experimentally investigate how an off-resonant drive on the transmon ancilla modifies the nonlinearities of cavity modes in qualitatively different ways, depending on the interrelation among cavity-transmon detuning, drive-transmon detuning and transmon anharmonicity. For a cavity-transmon detuning that is smaller than or comparable to the drive-transmon …
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…
In recent experiments, the re-thermalization time of the mechanical resonator is stated as the limiting factor for quantum applications of optomechanical systems. To explain the origin of this limitation, an analytical nonlinear investigation supported by the recent successful experimental laser cooling parameters is carried out in this work. To this end, the effects of geometrical and the optical nonlinearities on the squeezing are studied and are in a good agreement with the experimental results. It appears that highly squeezed state are generated where these nonlinearities are minimized and…
We explore the nonlinear dynamics of a cavity optomechanical system. Our realization consisting of a drumhead nano-electro-mechanical resonator (NEMS) coupled to a microwave cavity, allows for a nearly ideal platform to study the nonlinearities arising purely due to radiation-pressure physics. Experiments are performed under a strong microwave Stokes pumping which triggers mechanical self-sustained oscillations. We analyze the results in the framework of an extended nonlinear optomechanical theory, and demonstrate that quadratic and cubic coupling terms in the opto-mechanical Hamiltonian have …
We propose a scheme to generate strong and robust mechanical squeezing in an optomechanical system in the highly unresolved sideband (HURSB) regime with the help of the Duffing nonlinearity and intracavity squeezed light. The system is formed by a standard optomechanical system with the Duffing nonlinearity (mechanical nonlinearity) and a second-order nonlinear medium (optical nonlinearity). In the resolved sideband regime, the second-order nonlinear medium may play a destructive role in the generation of mechanical squeezing. However, it can significantly increase the mechanical squeezing (la…
We have observed nonlinear transduction of the thermomechanical motion of a nanomechanical resonator when detected as laser transmission through a sideband unresolved optomechanical cavity. Nonlinear detection mechanisms are of considerable interest as special cases allow for quantum nondemolition measurements of the mechanical resonator's energy. We investigate the origin of the nonlinearity in the optomechanical detection apparatus and derive a theoretical framework for the nonlinear signal transduction, and the optical spring effect, from both nonlinearities in the optical transfer function…
We consider a cavity optomechanical cooling configuration consisting of a mechanical resonator (denoted as resonator b) and an electromagnetic resonator (denoted as resonator a), which are coupled in such a way that the effective resonance frequency of resonator a depends linearly on the displacement of resonator b. We study whether back-reaction effects in such a configuration can be efficiently employed for suppression of decoherence. To that end, we consider the case where the mechanical resonator is prepared in a superposition of two coherent states and evaluate the rate of decoherence. We…
Optical microcavities and metallic nanostructures have been shown to significantly modulate the dynamics and spectroscopic response of molecular systems. We present a study of the nonlinear optics of a model consisting of $N$ anharmonic multilevel systems (e.g., Morse oscillators) undergoing collective strong coupling with a resonant infrared microcavity. We find that, under experimentally accessible conditions, molecular systems in microcavities may have nonlinear phenomena significantly intensified due to the high quality of polariton resonances and the enhanced microcavity electromagnetic e…
We study theoretically nonlinear effects arising from the presence of a Kerr-down conversion nonlinear crystal inside an optomechanical cavity. For this system we investigate the influences of the two nonlinearities, i.e., the Kerr nonlinearity and the parametric gain, on the dynamics of the oscillating mirror, the intensity and the squeezing spectra of the transmitted field, and the steady-state mirror-field entanglement. We show that in comparison with a bare optomechanical cavity, the combination of the cavity energy shift due to the Kerr nonlinearity and increase in the intracavity photon …
We investigate nonlinear effects in an electromechanical system consisting of a superconducting charge qubit coupled to transmission line resonator and a nanomechanical oscillator, which in turn is coupled to another transmission line resonator. The nonlinearities induced by the superconducting qubit and the optomechanical coupling play an important role in creating optomechanical entanglement as well as the squeezing of the transmitted microwave field. We show that strong squeezing of the microwave field and robust optomechanical entanglement can be achieved in the presence of moderate therma…
Optomechanics concerns with the coupling between optical cavities and mechanical resonators. Most early works are concentrated in the physics of optomechanics in the small-displacement regime and consider one single optical cavity mode participating in the optomechanical coupling. In this paper, we focus on optomechanics in the extremely-large-amplitude regime in which a mechanical resonator is coupled with multiple optical cavity modes during the oscillation. We explicitly show that the mechanical resonator can present self-sustained oscillations in a novel way with limit cycles in the shape …
The interaction of a single-mode field with both a weak Kerr medium and a parametric nonlinearity in an intrinsically nonlinear optomechanical system is studied. The nonlinearities due to the optomechanical coupling and Kerr-down conversion lead to the bistability and tristability in the mean intracavity photon number. Also, our work demonstrates that the lower bound of the resolved sideband regime and the minimum attainable phonon number can be less than that of a bare cavity by controlling the parametric nonlinearity and the phase of the driving field. Moreover, we find that in the system un…
Continuous-variable systems realized in high-coherence microwave cavities are a promising platform for quantum information processing. While strong dynamic nonlinear interactions are desired to implement fast and high-fidelity quantum operations, static cavity nonlinearities typically limit the performance of bosonic quantum error-correcting codes. Here we study theoretical models of nonlinear oscillators describing superconducting quantum circuits with asymmetric Josephson-junctions loops. Treating the nonlinearity as a perturbation, we derive effective Hamiltonians using the Schrieffer-Wolff…
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 present an approach for exponentially enhancing the single-photon coupling strength in an optomechanical system using only additional linear resources. It allows one to reach the quantum nonlinear regime of optomechanics, where nonlinear effects are observed at the single photon level, even if the bare coupling strength is much smaller than the mechanical frequency and cavity damping rate. Our method is based on using a large amplitude, strongly detuned mechanical parametric drive to amplify mechanical zero-point fluctuations and hence enhance the radiation pressure interaction. It has the …
We discuss general properties of the equilibrium state of parametric down-conversion in superconducting quantum circuits with detunings and Kerr anharmonicities, in the strongly nonlinear regime. By comparing moments of the steady state and those of a Schrödinger cat, we show that true Schrödinger cats cannot survive in the steady state if there is any single-photon loss. A delta-function 'cat-like' steady-state distribution can be formed, but this only exists in the limit of an extremely large nonlinearity. The steady state is a mixed state, which is more complex than a mixture or linear comb…
We implement nonlinear anharmonic interaction in the coupled van der Pol oscillators to investigate the quantum synchronization behaviour of the systems. We study the quantum synchronization in two oscillator models, coupled quantum van der Pol oscillators and anharmonic self-oscillators. We demonstrate that the considered systems exhibit a high-order synchronization through coupling in both classical and quantum domains. We show that due to the anharmonicity of the nonlinear interaction between the oscillators the system exhibits phonon blockade in the phase locking regime which is a pure non…
The interaction among the components of a hybrid quantum system is often neglected when considering the coupling of these components to an environment. However, if the interaction strength is large, this approximation leads to unphysical predictions, as has been shown for cavity-QED and optomechanical systems in the ultrastrong-coupling regime. To deal with these cases, master equations with dissipators retaining the interaction between these components have been derived for the quantum Rabi model and for the standard optomechanical Hamiltonian. In this article, we go beyond these previous der…
The field of cavity optomechanics has achieved groundbreaking photonic control and detection of mechanical oscillators, based on their coupling to linear electromagnetic modes. Lately, however, there is an uprising interest in exploring cavity nonlinearities as a powerful new resource in radiation-pressure interacting systems. Here, we present a flux-mediated optomechanical device combining a nonlinear Josephson-based superconducting quantum interference cavity with a mechanical nanobeam. We demonstrate how the intrinsic Kerr nonlinearity of the microwave circuit can be used for a counter-intu…
The radiation-pressure interaction between one or more laser fields and a mechanical oscillator gives rise to a wide range of phenomena: from sideband cooling and backaction-evading measurements to pondermotive and mechanical squeezing to entanglement and motional sideband asymmetry. In many protocols, such as dissipative mechanical squeezing, multiple lasers are utilized, giving rise to periodically driven optomechanical systems. Here we show that in this case, Floquet dynamics can arise due to presence of Kerr-type nonlinearities, which are ubiqitious in optomechanical systems. Specifically,…
