Optically Levitating Dielectrics in the Quantum Regime: Theory and Protocols

By Oriol Romero-Isart, Anika C. Pflanzer, Mathieu L. Juan, R. Quidant, N. Kiesel, Markus Aspelmeyer, J. I. Cirac. 2010

179 citations recorded by the source corpus.

We provide a general quantum theory to describe the coupling of light with the motion of a dielectric object inside a high-finesse optical cavity. In particular, we derive the total Hamiltonian of the system as well as a master equation describing the state of the center-of-mass mode of the dielectric and the cavity-field mode. In addition, a quantum theory of elasticity is used to study the coupling of the center-of-mass motion with internal vibrational excitations of the dielectric. This general theory is applied to the recent proposal of using an optically levitating nanodielectric as a cavity optomechanical system [see Romero-Isart et al., New J. Phys. 12, 033015 (2010); Chang et al., Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 107, 1005 (2010)]. On this basis, we also design a light-mechanics interface to prepare non-Gaussian states of the mechanical motion, such as quantum superpositions of Fock states. Finally, we introduce a direct mechanical tomography scheme to probe these genuine quantum states by time-of- flight experiments.

Subfields: Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics, Electrical and Electronic Engineering

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/d1d0cb62e01fa62f170b0f164d9780076c25eec0

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In Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics

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Citations in the corpus

Colloquium: Quantum interference of clusters and molecules (2011, methodology): “Low molecular beam velocities are expected via sympathetic cooling by laser cooled ions (Molhave and Drewsen, 2000) or by cooling in an off-resonant cavity (Chang et al., 2010; Horak et al., 1997; Nimmrichter et al., 2010; Romero-Isart et al., 2011a).”
Models of Wave-function Collapse, Underlying Theories, and Experimental Tests (2012, background): “On the other hand a recent proposal with magnetic levitated superconducting particles claims feasibility for large superpositions (Romero-Isart et al., 2011a).”
Quantum-coherent coupling of a mechanical oscillator to an optical cavity mode (2011, background): “This state swapping is at the heart of most quantum control protocol”