Optomechanical generation of a mechanical catlike state by phonon subtraction

TL;DR

This paper presents a method to generate a macroscopic mechanical catlike state in an optomechanical system by combining reservoir engineering, photon-phonon interactions, and photon number measurement, demonstrating feasibility with current technology.

Contribution

It introduces a novel scheme for creating a mechanical catlike state using phonon subtraction conditioned on photon measurements in an optomechanical setup.

Findings

Successful preparation of a phonon-subtracted catlike state with negative Wigner distribution.

Feasibility demonstrated using state-of-the-art photonic crystal optomechanical systems.

The scheme produces states with separated peaks and multiple interference fringes.

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.