Quantum squeezing in a nonlinear mechanical oscillator

Abstract

Mechanical degrees of freedom are natural candidates for continuous-variable quantum information processing and bosonic quantum simulations. However, these applications require the engineering of squeezing and nonlinearities in the quantum regime. Here we demonstrate squeezing below the zero-point fluctuations of a gigahertz-frequency mechanical resonator coupled to a superconducting qubit. This is achieved by parametrically driving the qubit, which results in an effective two-phonon drive. In addition, we show that the resonator mode inherits a nonlinearity from the off-resonant coupling with the qubit, which can be tuned by controlling the detuning. We, thus, realize a mechanical squeezed Kerr oscillator, in which we demonstrate the preparation of non-Gaussian quantum states of motion with Wigner function negativities and high quantum Fisher information. This shows that our results can also have applications in quantum metrology and sensing.