The ground electronic, vibrational and rotational state of the OH molecule is currently of interest as it can be manipulated by electric and magnetic fields for experimental studies in ultracold chemistry and quantum degeneracy. Based on our recent e
xact solution of the corresponding effective Stark-Zeeman Hamiltonian, we present an analytical study of the crossings and avoided crossings in the spectrum. These features are relevant to non-adiabatic transitions, conical intersections and Berry phases. Specifically, for an avoided crossing employed in the evaporative cooling of OH, we compare our exact results to those derived earlier from perturbation theory.
We present a ray transfer matrix for a spiral phase plate. Using this matrix, we determine the stability of an optical resonator made of two spiral phase plates, and trace stable ray orbits in the resonator. Our results should be relevant to laser ph
ysics, optical micromanipulation, quantum information and optomechanics.
We propose a new configuration for realizing torsional optomechanics: an optically trapped windmill-shaped dielectric interacting with Laguerre-Gaussian cavity modes containing both angular and radial nodes. In contrast to existing schemes, our metho
d can couple mechanical oscillators smaller than the optical beam waist to the in-principle unlimited orbital angular momentum that can be carried by a single photon, and thus generate substantial optomechanical interactions. Combining the advantages of small mass, large coupling, and low clamping losses, our work conceptually opens the way for the observation of quantum effects in torsional optomechanics.
The OH molecule is currently of great interest from the perspective of ultracold chemistry, quantum fluids, precision measurement and quantum computation. Crucial to these applications are the slowing, guiding, confinement and state control of OH, us
ing electric and magnetic fields. In this article, we show that the corresponding eight-dimensional effective ground state Stark-Zeeman Hamiltonian is exactly solvable and explicitly identify the underlying chiral symmetry. Our analytical solution opens the way to insightful characterization of the magnetoelectrostatic manipulation of ground state OH. Based on our results, we also discuss a possible application to the quantum simulation of an imbalanced Ising magnet.
We perform a quantum mechanical analysis of superconducting resonators subject to dielectric loss arising from charged two-level systems. We present numerical and analytical descriptions of the dynamics of energy decay from the resonator within the J
aynes-Cummings model. Our analysis allows us to distinguish the strong and weak coupling regimes of the model and to describe within each regime cases where the two-level system is unsaturated or saturated. We find that the quantum theory agrees with the classical model for weak coupling. However, for strong coupling the quantum theory predicts lower loss than the classical theory in the unsaturated regime. Also, in contrast to the classical theory, the photon number at which saturation occurs in the strong coupling quantum theory is independent of the coupling between the resonator and the two-level system.
We investigate the coupling of a nanomechanical oscillator in the quantum regime with molecular (electric) dipoles. We find theoretically that the cantilever can produce single-mode squeezing of the center-of-mass motion of an isolated trapped molecu
le and two-mode squeezing of the phonons of an array of molecules. This work opens up the possibility of manipulating dipolar crystals, which have been recently proposed as quantum memory, and more generally, is indicative of the promise of nanoscale cantilevers for the quantum detection and control of atomic and molecular systems.
We investigate theoretically the extension of cavity optomechanics to multiple membrane systems. We describe such a system in terms of the coupling of the collective normal modes of the membrane array to the light fields. We show these modes can be o
ptically addressed individually and be cooled, trapped and characterized, e.g. via quantum nondemolition measurements. Analogies between this system and a linear chain of trapped ions or dipolar molecules imply the possibility of related applications in the quantum regime.
We consider a small partially reflecting vibrating mirror coupled dispersively to a single optical mode of a high finesse cavity. We show this arrangement can be used to implement quantum squeezing of the mechanically oscillating mirror.
We consider the dynamics of a vibrating and rotating end-mirror of an optical Fabry-P{erot} cavity that can sustain Laguerre-Gaussian modes. We demonstrate theoretically that since the intra-cavity field carries linear as well as angular momentum, ra
diation pressure can create bipartite entanglement between a vibrational and a rotational mode of the mirror. Further we show that the ratio of vibrational and rotational couplings with the radiation field can easily be adjusted experimentally, which makes the generation and detection of entanglement robust to uncertainties in the cavity manufacture. This constitutes the first proposal to demonstrate entanglement between two qualitatively different degrees of freedom of the same macroscopic object.
It has previously been shown theoretically that the exchange of linear momentum between the light field in an optical cavity and a vibrating end mirror can entangle the electromagnetic field with the vibrational motion of that mirror. In this paper w
e consider the rotational analog of this situation and show that radiation torque can similarly entangle a Laguerre-Gaussian cavity mode with a rotating end mirror. We examine the mirror-field entanglement as a function of ambient temperature, radiation detuning and orbital angular momentum carried by the cavity mode.
