Studying mechanical resonators via radiation pressure offers a rich avenue for the exploration of quantum mechanical behavior in a macroscopic regime. However, quantum state preparation and especially quantum state reconstruction of mechanical oscillators remains a significant challenge. Here we propose a scheme to realize quantum state tomography, squeezing and state purification of a mechanical resonator using short optical pulses. The scheme presented allows observation of mechanical quantum features despite preparation from a thermal state and is shown to be experimentally feasible using optical microcavities. Our framework thus provides a promising means to explore the quantum nature of massive mechanical oscillators and can be applied to other systems such as trapped ions.
@article{arxiv.1011.0879,
title = {Pulsed quantum optomechanics},
author = {M. R. Vanner and I. Pikovski and G. D. Cole and M. S. Kim and C. Brukner and K. Hammerer and G. J. Milburn and M. Aspelmeyer},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1011.0879},
year = {2011}
}