Observability of radiation-pressure shot noise in optomechanical systems

Abstract

We present a theoretical study of an experiment designed to detect radiation pressure shot noise in an optomechanical system. Our model consists of a coherently driven optical cavity mode that is coupled to a mechanical oscillator. We examine the cross-correlation between two quadratures of the output field from the cavity. We determine under which circumstances radiation pressure shot noise can be detected by a measurement of this cross-correlation. This is done in the general case of nonzero detuning between the frequency of the drive and the cavity resonance frequency. We study the qualitative features of the different contributions to the cross-correlator and provide quantitative figures of merit for the relative importance of the radiation pressure shot noise contribution to other contributions. We also propose a modified setup of this experiment relevant to the "membrane-inthe-middle" geometry, which potentially can avoid the problems of static bistability and classical noise in the drive.

Quantum back-action in measurements of zero-point mechanical oscillations

“…At the moment, it is still experimentally challenging to directly observe quantum radiation-pressure noise in optomechanical devices due to high levels of environmental thermal fluctuations, and there are significant efforts being made toward this [4][5][6][7][8]23]. One approach proposed by Verlot et al [4] is, instead, to probe the quantum correlation between the shot noise and the radiation-pressure noise, which, in principle, is totally immune to thermal fluctuations.…”

“…This fluctuation carries the zero-point mechanical energy ofhω m /2. As a key feature of quantum mechanics, the zero-point fluctuation of displacement is an important effect to verify when we bring macroscopic mechanical degrees of freedom into their ground states [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8]. Needless to say, a continuous observation of the zero-point fluctuation of a macroscopic mechanical oscillator requires superb displacement sensitivity.…”

Effect of Poisson noise on adiabatic quantum control

“…It has been applied to a variety of settings, e.g., micromechanical resonators [20], the statistics of current through Josephson junctions [21,22], modeling random impulsive excitations [23], and its effects on transport of Brownian particles [24,25]. It has also been used to model the effect of light-intensity fluctuations on photochemical reactions [26] and radiation-pressure shot noise in optomechanical systems [27,28]. It was first considered in a quantum setting in [29] and has since been proposed as a power source for a quantum heat engine [30,31].…”

Singular probability distribution of shot-noise driven systems

“…Also, the characteristic heights of the distribution peaks decrease with the decreasing Γ/ω 0 , which suggests that Γ/ω 0 should not be too small. This can be of interest for revealing shot noise in side-band cooled vibrational systems, since the cooling leads to the increase of the decay rate [17,18,24,25].…”

“…Our results extend from the limit of overdamped dynamics to underdamped dynamics, where the relaxation rate is small compared to the typical vibration frequency of the system. Examples of underdamped systems that are of interest for studying Poisson-noise induced fluctuations include Josephson junctions [15], nano-magnetic oscillators [16], and high-Q nanomechanical resonators coupled to electron tunneling, to mention but a few; the problem attracted much attention recently in the context of the studies of radiation-pressure shot noise with optomechanical systems [17,18]. We assume that the Poisson noise pulses have constant amplitude, which is relevant for most of the above systems.…”