Sub-Poissonian phonon lasing in three-mode optomechanics

Abstract

We propose to use the resonant enhancement of the parametric instability in an optomechanical system of two optical modes coupled to a mechanical oscillator to prepare mechanical limit cycles with sub-Poissonian phonon statistics. Strong single-photon coupling is not required. The requirements regarding sideband resolution, circulating cavity power, and environmental temperature are in reach with state of the art parameters of optomechanical crystals. Phonon antibunching can be verfied in a Hanburry Brown-Twiss measurement on the output field of the optomechanical cavity.

Antibunching in an optomechanical oscillator

“…To this end, several recent proposals have studied possible nonlinearities in optomechanical setups exploiting, for example, an enhanced optomechanical nonlinearity based on an optomechanical system employing a few optical modes * hseok@kongju.ac.kr [25][26][27][28], an intrinsic mechanical nonlinearity [29,30], and the coupling of mechanical systems to a qubit [31,32].…”

Dynamical phonon laser in coupled active-passive microresonators

“…The inversion in a passive setup (g = −γ) can increase with time, in addition to reaching the steady states (not shown here) under lower drive intensity E for this passive setup (in the absence of considerably high optical gain, steady states may exist under the condition g m |α i | ≪ γ for a blue detuned drive, where α i are the average cavity field amplitudes proportional to the drive intensity E; see e.g. a proposed setup in [48]). The enhanced SQ process heats up the cavity material with increased thermal occupation b †b (t) different from the quantity | b (t) | 2 , and the very strong light fields after a long period will make the system go beyond the current model of linear amplification and dissipation in accordance with the specific material properties.…”

Phase-controlled phonon laser

“…, which makes it possible to observe non-trivial quantum effects such as phonon anti-bunching [65], as detectable [48] via the Hanburry Brown-Twiss measurements of the output of the optomechanical cavity [66]. Therefore, such a non-classical phonon laser provides the key source for future fundamental studies and applications of quantum or nonlinear acoustics, such as vacuum Casimir-Rabi splittings [67] , squeezed phonons [68,69], and bistable phonon emission [70].…”

“…If the RWA is not satisfied, the pure effects [71] of counter-rotating terms should be observed. It is worth noting that the thermal noise of mechanical oscillators is detrimental for the coherent single phonon processes, while the negativity of the mechanical oscillator's Wigner function can still be observed with the thermal phonon occupation = n 2 th [66], which is corresponding to a 100 MHz mechanical mode in 10 mK environment.…”