Reservoir engineering and dynamical phase transitions in optomechanical arrays

Abstract

We study the driven-dissipative dynamics of photons interacting with an array of micromechanical membranes in an optical cavity. Periodic membrane driving and phonon creation result in an effective photon-numberconserving nonunitary dynamics, which features a steady state with long-range photonic coherence. If the leakage of photons out of the cavity is counteracted by incoherent driving of the photonic modes, we show that the system undergoes a dynamical phase transition to the state with long-range coherence. A minimal system, composed of two micromechanical membranes in a cavity, is studied in detail, and it is shown to be a realistic setup where the key processes of the driven-dissipative dynamics can be seen.

Silicon optomechanical crystal resonator at millikelvin temperatures

“…Thirdly, although lower phonon occupancies could have been measured using thinner phononic shields, effectively increasing the coupling rate γ 0 to the fridge bath at T f , this would come with a commensurate reduction in cooperativity C = γ OM /γ i . Coherent quantum interactions between the optical cavity field and the mechanical resonator require C > 1 and n < 1, and although the devices of this work closely approach this limit, a move to quasi-2D Si OMC devices [33] with orders of magnitude larger thermal conductance should enable future work in the quantum regime as envisioned in recent proposals [13,[15][16][17].…”

“…Beyond the usual paradigm of cavity optomechanics involving isolated single mechanical elements [9,10], OMCs can be fashioned into planar circuits for photons and phonons, and arrays of optomechanical elements can be interconnected via optical and acoustic waveguides [11]. Such coupled OMC arrays have been proposed as a way to realize quantum optomechanical memories [12], nanomechanical circuits for continuous variable quantum information processing [13] and phononic quantum networks [14], and as a platform for engineering and studying quantum many-body physics of optomechanical metamaterials [15][16][17].The realization of optomechanical systems in the quantum regime is predicated upon the ability to limit thermal noise in the mechanics while simultaneously introducing large coherent coupling between optical and mechanical degrees of freedom. In this regard, laser back-action cooling has recently been employed in simple OMC cavity systems [6,18] consisting of a one-dimensional (1D) nanobeam resonator surrounded by a two-dimensional (2D) phononic band gap.…”

Interferometric quantum cascade systems

“…gineering system-bath coupling in quantum optical systems, which in turn may help in dissipatively preparing quantum many-body states of matter [20][21][22] with important consequences in the analysis of non-equilibrium condensed matter physics problems [23][24][25][26] and quantum information [10,[27][28][29][30]. Aim of the present work is to derive a mathematical framework that incorporate these phenomena in a consistent way.…”

Quantum interference between independent reservoirs in open quantum systems

“…An environment generally results in quantum decoherence [1,2]. At the same time, it can be used to control the dynamics of a system through quantum reservoir engineering [3][4][5][6][7], or generate interesting new phases in many-body systems [8][9][10][11][12]. The theoretical paradigm to study open quantum systems often relies on the master equation (ME) approach [13].…”