Reservoir engineering of a mechanical resonator: generating a macroscopic superposition state and monitoring its decoherence

TL;DR

This paper proposes a deterministic method to generate and monitor macroscopic superposition states in nanomechanical resonators using engineered dissipative optomechanical interactions, enabling controlled decoherence testing.

Contribution

It introduces a novel dissipative scheme leveraging quadratic optomechanical interactions to produce and study macroscopic quantum superpositions in mechanical resonators.

Findings

Successful theoretical scheme for superposition generation

Method for monitoring decoherence processes

Potential for controlled decoherence testing

Abstract

A deterministic scheme for generating a macroscopic superposition state of a nanomechanical resonator is proposed. The nonclassical state is generated through a suitably engineered dissipative dynamics exploiting the optomechanical quadratic interaction with a bichromatically driven optical cavity mode. The resulting driven dissipative dynamics can be employed for monitoring and testing the decoherence processes affecting the nanomechanical resonator under controlled conditions.