We give a theoretical description of a coherently driven opto-mechanical system with a single added photon. The photon source is modeled as a cavity which initially contains one photon and which is irreversibly coupled to the opto-mechanical system. We show that the probability for the additional photon to be emitted by the opto-mechanical cavity will exhibit oscillations under a Lorentzian envelope, when the driven interaction with the mechanical resonator is strong enough. Our scheme provides a feasible route towards quantum state transfer between optical photons and micromechanical resonators.
We derive analytical formulas for the forward emission and side emission spectra of cavity-modified single-photon sources, as well as the corresponding normal-mode oscillations in the cavity quantum electrodynamics (QED) strong-coupling regime. We investigate the effects of pure dephasing, treated in the phase-diffusion model based on a Wiener-Levy process, on the emission spectra and normal-mode oscillations. We also extend our previous calculation of quantum efficiency to include the pure dephasing process. All results are obtained in the Weisskopf-Wigner approximation for an impulse-excited emitter. We find that the spectra are broadened, the depths of the normal-mode oscillations are reduced and the quantum efficiency is decreased in the presence of pure dephasing.
We explore photon coincidence counting statistics in the ultrastrong-coupling regime where the atom-cavity coupling rate becomes comparable to the cavity resonance frequency. In this regime usual normal order correlation functions fail to describe the output photon statistics. By expressing the electric-field operator in the cavity-emitter dressed basis we are able to propose correlation functions that are valid for arbitrary degrees of light-matter interaction. Our results show that the standard photon blockade scenario is significantly modified for ultrastrong coupling. We observe parametric processes even for two-level emitters and temporal oscillations of intensity correlation functions at a frequency given by the ultrastrong photon emitter coupling. These effects can be traced back to the presence of two-photon cascade decays induced by counter-rotating interaction terms.
Demonstrating and exploiting the quantum nature of larger, more macroscopic mechanical objects would help us to directly investigate the limitations of quantum-based measurements and quantum information protocols, as well as test long standing questions about macroscopic quantum coherence. The field of cavity opto- and electro-mechanics, in which a mechanical oscillator is parametrically coupled to an electromagnetic resonance, provides a practical architecture for the manipulation and detection of motion at the quantum level. Reaching this quantum level requires strong coupling, interaction timescales between the two systems that are faster than the time it takes for energy to be dissipated. By incorporating a free-standing, flexible aluminum membrane into a lumped-element superconducting resonant cavity, we have increased the single photon coupling strength between radio-frequency mechanical motion and resonant microwave photons by more than two orders of magnitude beyond the current state-of-the-art. A parametric drive tone at the difference frequency between the two resonant systems dramatically increases the overall coupling strength. This has allowed us to completely enter the strong coupling regime. This is evidenced by a maximum normal mode splitting of nearly six bare cavity line-widths. Spectroscopic measurements of these dressed states are in excellent quantitative agreement with recent theoretical predictions. The basic architecture presented here provides a feasible path to ground-state cooling and subsequent coherent control and measurement of the quantum states of mechanical motion.
We theoretically explore a quantum memory using a single nanoparticle levitated in an optical dipole trap and subjected to feedback cooling. This protocol is realized by storing and retrieving a single photon quantum state from a mechanical mode in levitated cavityless optomechanics. We describe the effectiveness of the photon-phonon-photon transfer in terms of the fidelity, the Wigner function, and the zero-delay second-order autocorrelation function. For experimentally accessible parameters, our numerical results indicate robust conversion of the quantum states of the input signal photon to those of the retrieved photon. We also show that high fidelity single-photon wavelength conversion is possible in the system as long as intense control pulses shorter than the mechanical damping time are used. Our work opens up the possibility of using levitated optomechanical systems for applications of quantum information processing.
We study the simplest optomechanical system with a focus on the bistable regime. The covariance matrix formalism allows us to study both cooling and entanglement in a unified framework. We identify two key factors governing entanglement, namely the bistability parameter, i.e. the distance from the end of a stable branch in the bistable regime, and the effective detuning, and we describe the optimum regime where entanglement is greatest. We also show that in general entanglement is a non-monotonic function of optomechanical coupling. This is especially important in understanding the optomechanical entanglement of the second stable branch.