Abstract
We address the macroscopic quantumness of the state of mechanical systems subjected to conditional protocols devised for state engineering in cavity optomechanics. We use a measure of macroscopicity based on phase-space methods. We cover the transition regime into strong single-photon coupling, illustrating how measurements performed over the cavity field that drives the dynamics of a mechanical system are able to steer the latter toward large quantum coherent states. The effect of losses is evaluated for the case of an open cavity and analyzed in terms of the features of the Wigner functions of the state of the mechanical system. We also address the case of engineered phonon-subtracted mechanical systems, in full open-system configuration, demonstrating the existence of optimal working points for the sake of mesoscopic quantumness. Our study is relevant for and applicable to a broad range of settings, from clamped to levitated mechanical systems.
Highlights
H McAleese and M Paternostro that is assisted by measurements performed on the optical field that drives the mechanical motion
We have studied the relative performance of conditional measurements that can be made on a cavity field in an optomechanical system to engineer macroscopic quantum states of a mechanical mode
We focused on the influence that the measurement settings of general homodyne and heterodyne measurements performed on the light field of an optomechanical system have on the degree of macroscopicity of the mechanical state
Summary
Centre for Theoretical Atomic, Molecular and Optical Physics, School of Mathematics and Physics, Queen’s University, Belfast BT7 1NN, United Kingdom Keywords: macroscopic quantumness, optomechanics, quantum measurements, open quantum systems Original content from this work may be used under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 licence. Any further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the title of the work, journal citation and DOI.
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