The photon blockade effect in optomechanical systems

TL;DR

This paper investigates the photon blockade effect in optomechanical systems, revealing non-classical photon correlations under strong coupling and sideband resolved conditions, with analytic insights into photon interactions.

Contribution

It provides the first detailed analytic understanding of photon-photon interactions and blockade effects in strong coupling optomechanical systems.

Findings

Photon blockade occurs in the strong coupling regime.

Non-classical photon correlations are predicted.

Analytic expressions for spectra and correlations are derived.

Abstract

We analyze the photon statistics of a weakly driven optomechanical system and discuss the effect of photon blockade under single photon strong coupling conditions. We present an intuitive interpretation of this effect in terms of displaced oscillator states and derive analytic expressions for the cavity excitation spectrum and the two photon correlation function $g^{(2)}(0)$. Our results predict the appearance of non-classical photon correlations in the combined strong coupling and sideband resolved regime, and provide a first detailed understanding of photon-photon interactions in strong coupling optomechanics.