An Interferometrically Robust Opto-Mechanical Coupler to Beam Polarisation

TL;DR

This paper presents a robust interferometric opto-mechanical transducer that maps micro-mechanical membrane displacements onto laser beam polarization, enabling quantum state transfer with reduced stabilization needs.

Contribution

The work introduces a novel interferometric setup for polarization encoding of mechanical motion, enhancing robustness and potential for quantum communication applications.

Findings

Demonstrated phase shifts caused by a silicon nitride membrane in an asymmetric cavity

Used polarization encoding and balanced homodyne detection to measure thermal noise

Minor design improvements could enable detection of quantum motional noise

Abstract

In this work, we investigate a tool for hybrid quantum systems that implements a transducer to map small position changes of a micro-mechanical membrane onto the polarization of a laser beam. This is achieved with an interferometric setup that has reduced needs for stabilization. Specifically, an oscillating silicon nitride membrane placed in the middle of an asymmetric optical cavity causes phase shifts in the reflected, near-resonant light field. A beam displacer is used to combine the signal beam with a mode-matched, orthogonally polarized reference beam for polarization encoding. Subsequent balanced homodyne measurement is used to detect thermal membrane noise. Minor improvements in the design should achieve sufficiently high signal-to-noise ratio for the detection of motional quantum noise in the regime of high opto-mechanical coupling strength. This setup can provide a robust quantum link between a micro-mechanical oscillator and other systems such as atomic ensembles.