Generation of the mechanical Schrödinger cat state in a hybrid atom-optomechanical system

Abstract

In this paper, we propose a new theoretical scheme for generating a macroscopic Schrödinger cat state of a mechanical oscillator in a hybrid optomechanical system where a beam of two-level atoms passes through the cavity. In the model under consideration, the cavity field couples to the macroscopic mirror through the optomechanical interaction while it couples to the atom through a generalized Jaynes–Cummings interaction that involves the cavity-mode structure. The motion of the mirror modifies the cavity-mode function and therefore modulates the atom-field interaction, leading to the three-mode atom-field-mirror coupling or, equivalently, polariton-mirror coupling in a dressed picture. This interaction induces a controllable anharmonicity in the energy spectrum of the mechanical oscillator, which provides the possibility of generating a superposition of two time-dependent coherent states of the mechanical oscillator just by performing a conditional measurement on the internal states of the atoms exiting the optomechanical cavity. We also investigate the tripartite atom-field-mirror entanglement, which is controllable by adjusting the parameters of the system. In addition, we explore the effects of the mechanical dissipation and thermal noise on the tripartite quantum correlation in the system as well as the generated mechanical superposition state.