2008/03/26 by Max Ludwig, Björn Kubala, Florian Marquardt · 4 citations
Physics and Astronomy · #Advanced Thermodynamics and Statistical Mechanics #Dimensionless quantity #Force Microscopy Techniques and Applications #Function (biology) #Instability #Master equation #Mechanical and Optical Resonators #Optical cavity #Phonon #Photon #Quantum #Wigner distribution function #cond-mat.mes-hall #quant-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.1088/1367-2630/10/9/095013
23 pages, 6 figures, subm. to focus issue of New Journal of Physics on "Mechanical Systems at the Quantum Limit"
arxiv created 2008/03/26 · openalex publication_date 2008/09/30 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2016/06/24 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
We consider a generic optomechanical system, consisting of a driven optical cavity and a movable mirror attached to a cantilever. Systems of this kind (and analogues) have been realized in many recent experiments. It is well known that these systems can exhibit an instability towards a regime where the cantilever settles into self-sustained oscillations. In this paper, we briefly review the classical theory of the optomechanical instability, and then discuss the features arising in the quantum regime. We solve numerically a full quantum master equation for the coupled system, and use it to analyze the photon number, the cantilever's mechanical energy, the phonon probability distribution and the mechanical Wigner density, as a function of experimentally accessible control parameters. When a suitable dimensionless 'quantum parameter' is sent to zero, the results of the quantum mechanical model converge towards the classical predictions. We discuss this quantum-to-classical transition in some detail.