Strong Thermo-mechanical Squeezing in a far detuned Membrane-in-the-middle System

TL;DR

This paper reports achieving 8.5 dB thermal squeezing of a membrane oscillator through dynamical backaction and electrostatic feedback, even in far detuning regimes, with potential quantum applications.

Contribution

It introduces a novel method combining dynamical backaction and electrostatic feedback for strong mechanical squeezing in a far detuned optomechanical system.

Findings

Achieved 8.5 dB thermal squeezing of a membrane oscillator.

Demonstrated strong squeezing in the far detuning regime.

Implemented active feedback to surpass the 3 dB squeezing limit.

Abstract

We demonstrate 8.5 dB thermal squeezing of a membrane oscillator using the dynamical backaction effect and electrostatic feedback in an optomechanical membrane-in-the-middle setup. We show that strong squeezing can be obtained even in the far detuning regime of a sideband-resolved system. By using the dielectrophoretic force of a metallic needle kept in close proximity to the membrane, we implement the one-quadrature active feedback scheme to prevent the divergence of the amplified quadrature and surpass the 3 dB limit of mechanical squeezing. We also discuss different regions of the sideband spectrum where strong squeezing can be obtained. Although the demonstration here is classical, this technique is equally applicable to prepare the mechanical oscillator in a quantum squeezed state.