The optomechanical instability in the quantum regime
Abstract
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 those 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. We observe and discuss the quantum-to-classical transition as a function of a suitable dimensionless quantum parameter.
Cite
@article{arxiv.0803.3714,
title = {The optomechanical instability in the quantum regime},
author = {Max Ludwig and Björn Kubala and Florian Marquardt},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:0803.3714},
year = {2009}
}
Comments
23 pages, 6 figures, subm. to focus issue of New Journal of Physics on "Mechanical Systems at the Quantum Limit"