Abstract
Levitated particles are a promising platform for precision sensing of external perturbations and probing the boundary between quantum and classical worlds. A critical obstacle for these applications is the difficulty of generating nonclassical states of motion which have not been realized so far. Here, we show that strong squeezing of the motion of a levitated particle below the vacuum level is feasible with available experimental parameters. Using suitable modulation of the trapping potential (which is impossible with clamped mechanical resonators) and coherent scattering of trapping photons into a cavity mode, we explore several strategies to achieve strong phase-sensitive suppression of mechanical fluctuations. We analyze mechanical squeezing in both transient and steady-state regimes, and discuss conditions for preparing nonclassical mechanical squeezing. Our results pave the way to full, deterministic optomechanical control of levitated particles in the quantum regime.
Highlights
Cavity optomechanics [1], in which optical fields interact with mechanical elements via radiation pressure, has a tremendous potential for sensing of weak forces [2,3,4,5] and testing fundamental physical theories [6,7]
Dissipative squeezing is well known in optomechanics [33,34,35,36]; we show here that adding parametric to
Eqs. (7)]; for realistic experimental parameters [48], the cavity input noise is much weaker than thermal decoherence and input squeezing provides no advantage
Summary
Cavity optomechanics [1], in which optical fields interact with mechanical elements via radiation pressure, has a tremendous potential for sensing of weak forces [2,3,4,5] and testing fundamental physical theories [6,7]. Experimental techniques for cooling [20,21,22,23,24] and thermal squeezing [25] of their center-of-mass motion, as well as for controlling their rotations [26,27] and libration [28,29], have been firmly established Despite these efforts and results, genuinely nonclassical states of motion of levitated particles remain elusive. We employ coherent scattering of the trapping beam into an empty cavity mode [43,44] instead of the usual dispersive optomechanical interaction This technique has, so far, been used to cool the motion of trapped ions [45] and, recently, levitated particles [46,47] (including cooling from the room temperature to the quantum ground state [48]); we show that it can be used for more advanced control of mechanical motion. As coherent scattering enables all mechanical modes to be coupled to the same cavity mode, our results can be generalized to multiple dimensions, serving as a first step toward preparing complex nonclassical states of the motion of levitated particles
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