1303.3447 (A. A. Gangat)

In-situ monitoring and control of mechanical wavefunction collapse: an
optomechanical scheme    [PDF]

A. A. Gangat

The optomechanical system demonstrated by Sankey {\em et al.} [Nat. Phys. {\bf 6}, 707 (2010)] enables different types of parametric couplings between optical fields and mechanical motion to be achieved simultaneously, including one that is purely quartic to lowest order in the mechanical motion. We propose and analyze a scheme that uses this capability to monitor and control {\em in-situ} the conditional phonon number ($n_b$) variance of a mechanical mode via continuous weak measurements of $n_b$ and $n_b^2$ while simultaneously cooling to $\ < n_b \ >\approx1$. Simulations show a monotonic decrease in the steady-state phonon number variance with increasing measurement strength.

View original: http://arxiv.org/abs/1303.3447