High purity two-dimensional levitated mechanical oscillator

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates a high purity two-dimensional levitated mechanical oscillator with strong optomechanical coupling, creating correlations between orthogonal directions, and paving the way for continuous variable entanglement in 2D motion.

Contribution

It reports the first achievement of a high purity 2D state in levitated optomechanics with spectral superposition and correlations, advancing towards mechanical entanglement.

Findings

Achieved a high purity two-dimensional state.

Observed spectral superposition between oscillations in different directions.

Generated significant correlations between orthogonal directions.

Abstract

In recent years, levitated optomechanics has delivered on the promise of reaching the motional quantum ground state. An important next milestone of the field would be the generation of mechanical entanglement. An ideal candidate is the two-dimensional motion in the polarization plane of an optical tweezer inside an optical cavity, where optical and mechanical modes are coupled via coherent scattering. Necessary conditions towards this achievement are two-dimensional ground state cooling along with substantial spectral overlap between the two modes. The latter condition is required to generate the necessary correlations, but unfortunately, it hinders efficient cooling thus narrowing the useful parameter space. In this work, we report the achievement of a high purity two-dimensional state in a regime where the strong optomechanical coupling induces the desired spectral superposition between oscillations in different directions, as reflected in the non-trivial spectral shape of the detected cavity field. As a result, significant correlations consistently arise between any pair of orthogonal directions, preventing the motion from being reduced to two independent one-dimensional oscillators and leading to higher purity compared to that scenario. Our system serves as an excellent platform for realizing continuous variable entanglement in two-dimensional motion.