Abstract
We propose a scheme to prepare a macroscopic mechanical oscillator in a catlike state, close to a coherent state superposition. The mechanical oscillator, coupled by radiation-pressure interaction to a field in an optical cavity, is first prepared close to a squeezed vacuum state using a reservoir engineering technique. The system is then probed using a short optical pulse tuned to the lower motional sideband of the cavity resonance, realizing a photon-phonon swap interaction. A photon number measurement of the photons emerging from the cavity then conditions a phonon-subtracted catlike state with a negative Wigner distribution exhibiting separated peaks and multiple interference fringes. We show that this scheme is feasible using state-of-the-art photonic crystal optomechanical system.
| Original language | American English |
|---|---|
| Article number | 033812 |
| Journal | Physical Review A |
| Volume | 101 |
| Issue number | 3 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - Mar 2020 |
| Externally published | Yes |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information:We thank D. Malz, C. Galland, and N. J. Engelsen for useful discussions and comments. This work was supported by the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under Grant Agreement No. 732894 (FET Proactive HOT).
Publisher Copyright:
© 2020 authors. Published by the American Physical Society. Published by the American Physical Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the published article's title, journal citation, and DOI.