Optomechanical Entanglement between an Ion and an Optical Cavity Field

TL;DR

This paper investigates an optomechanical system coupling a trapped ion's motion with a cavity field, demonstrating bistability, normal mode splitting, and steady-state entanglement, with implications for quantum information processing.

Contribution

It introduces a novel ion-cavity optomechanical system exhibiting bistability, normal mode splitting, and steady-state entanglement, advancing quantum interface capabilities.

Findings

Photon number bistability at high pump intensities

Normal mode splitting indicating coherent energy exchange

Steady-state continuous variable entanglement

Abstract

We study an optomechanical system in which the mechanical motion of a single trapped ion is coupled to a cavity field for the realization of a strongly quantum correlated two-mode system. We show that for large pump intensities the steady state photon number exhibits bistable behaviour. We further analyze the occurrence of normal mode splitting (NMS) due to mixing of the fluctuations of the cavity field and the fluctuations of the ion motion which indicates a coherent energy exchange. We also find that in the parameter regime where NMS exists, the steady state of the system shows continuous variable entanglement. Such a two-mode optomechanical system can be used for the realization of continuous variable quantum information interfaces and networks.