Quantum Nondemolition Photon Counting With a Hybrid Electromechanical Probe

TL;DR

This paper proposes a hybrid optoelectromechanical system for quantum nondemolition photon counting, utilizing a nonperturbative electro-optical coupling that enables sensitive photon number measurement via voltage shifts, compatible with current experimental methods.

Contribution

It introduces a novel hybrid platform combining cavity and electromechanical components for QND photon counting, leveraging a linear voltage shift dependent on photon number.

Findings

Peak voltage shift linearly depends on photon occupation

Effective in strong optomechanical coupling regime

Compatible with existing experimental techniques

Abstract

Quantum nondemolition (QND) measurements of photons is a much pursued endeavor in the field of quantum optics and quantum information processing. Here we propose a novel hybrid optoelectromechanical platform that integrates a cavity system with a hybrid electromechanical probe for QND photon counting. Building upon a mechanical-mode-mediated nonperturbative electro-optical dispersive coupling, our protocol performs the QND photon counting measurement by means of the current-voltage characteristics of the probe. In particular, we show that the peak voltage shift of the differential conductance is linearly dependent on the photon occupation number, thus providing a sensitive measure of the photon number, especially in the strong optomechanical coupling regime. Given that our proposed hybrid system is compatible with state-of-the-art experimental techniques, we discuss its implementations and anticipate applications in quantum optics and polariton physics.