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Published August 8, 2013 | Submitted + Published
Journal Article Open

Open quantum dynamics of single-photon optomechanical devices

Abstract

We study the quantum dynamics of a Michelson interferometer with Fabry-Perot cavity arms and one movable end mirror, and driven by a single photon—an optomechanical device previously studied by Marshall et al. as a device that searches for gravity decoherence. We obtain an exact analytical solution for the system's quantum mechanical equations of motion, including details about the exchange of the single photon between the cavity mode and the external continuum. The resulting time evolution of the interferometer's fringe visibility displays interesting new features when the incoming photon's frequency uncertainty is narrower or comparable to the cavity's line width—only in the limiting case of much broader-band photon does the result return to that of Marshall et al., but in this case the photon is not very likely to enter the cavity and interact with the mirror, making the experiment less efficient and more susceptible to imperfections. In addition, we show that in the strong-coupling regime, by engineering the incoming photon's wave function, it is possible to prepare the movable mirror into an arbitrary quantum state of a multidimensional Hilbert space.

Additional Information

© 2013 American Physical Society. Received 21 June 2013; published 8 August 2013. We thank our other colleagues in the LIGO MQM discussion group for fruitful discussions. We acknowledge funding provided by the Institute for Quantum Information and Matter, an NSF Physics Frontiers Center with support of the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation. This work has also been supported by NSF Grants No. PHY-0555406, No. PHY-0956189, and No. PHY-1068881, as well as the David and Barbara Groce startup fund at Caltech.

Attached Files

Published - PhysRevA.88.023812.pdf

Submitted - 1110.3348.pdf

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August 19, 2023
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