2014/12/17 by J. -M. Pirkkalainen, J.-M. Pirkkalainen, S.U. Cho +11 · 3 citations
Engineering · Physics and Astronomy · #Coupling (piping) #Force Microscopy Techniques and Applications #Mechanical and Optical Resonators #Microwave #Microwave cavity #Nonlinear system #Optics #Optomechanics #Photon #Photonic and Optical Devices #Physics #Quantum #Quantum mechanics #Qubit #Radiation pressure #cond-mat.mes-hall #quant-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.1038/ncomms7981
published as Nature Communications 6, 6981 (2015) · 5 pages + supplementary
arxiv created 2014/12/17 · openalex publication_date 2015/04/27 · arxiv updated 2015/10/16 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
Coupling electromagnetic waves in a cavity and mechanical vibrations via the radiation pressure of photons is a promising platform for investigations of quantum-mechanical properties of motion. A drawback is that the effect of one photon tends to be tiny, and hence one of the pressing challenges is to substantially increase the interaction strength. A novel scenario is to introduce into the setup a quantum two-level system (qubit), which, besides strengthening the coupling, allows for rich physics via strongly enhanced nonlinearities. Here we present a design of cavity optomechanics in the microwave frequency regime involving a Josephson junction qubit. We demonstrate boosting of the radiation-pressure interaction by six orders of magnitude, allowing to approach the strong coupling regime. We observe nonlinear phenomena at single-photon energies, such as an enhanced damping attributed to the qubit. This work opens up nonlinear cavity optomechanics as a plausible tool for the study of quantum properties of motion.