Highly nonclassical phonon emission statistics through two-phonon loss of van der Pol oscillator

TL;DR

This paper proposes a scheme using a quantum van der Pol oscillator with two-phonon loss to generate highly nonclassical phonon emission with antibunching, supported by analytical and numerical methods, advancing quantum communication technologies.

Contribution

It introduces a novel approach to produce strong phonon antibunching using a single vdP oscillator with two-phonon loss, avoiding complex coupled systems.

Findings

Antibunching degree increases with two-phonon loss

Optimal regimes for single-phonon emission identified

High phonon emission amplitudes with antibunching achieved

Abstract

The ability to produce nonclassical wave in a system is essential for advances in quantum communication and computation. Here, we propose a scheme to generate highly nonclassical phonon emission statistics -- antibunched wave in a quantum van der Pol (vdP) oscillator subject to an external driving, both single- and two-phonon losses. It is found that phonon antibunching depends significantly on the nonlinear two-phonon loss of the vdP oscillator, where the degree of the antibunching increases monotonically with the two-phonon loss and the distinguished parameter regimes with optimal antibunching and single-phonon emission are identified clearly. In addition, we give an in-depth insight into strong antibunching in the emitted phonon statistics by analytical calculations using a three-oscillator-level model, which agree well with the full numerical simulations employing a master-equation approach and a Schrodinger-equation approach at weak driving. In turn, the fluorescence phonon emission spectra of the vdP oscillator, given by the power spectral density, are also evaluated. We further show that high phonon emission amplitudes, simultaneously accompanied by strong phonon antibunching, are attainable in the vdP system, which are beneficial to the correlation measurement in practical experiments. Our approach only requires a single vdP oscillator, without the need for reconfiguring the two coupled nonlinear resonators or the complex nanophotonic structures as compared to the previous unconventional blockade schemes. The present scheme could inspire methods to achieve antibunching in other systems.