Phonon pumping by modulating the ultrastrong vacuum
Fabrizio Minganti, Alberto Mercurio, Fabio Mauceri, Marco Scigliuzzo, Salvatore Savasta, Vincenzo Savona
SciPost Phys. 17, 027 (2024) · published 30 July 2024
- doi: 10.21468/SciPostPhys.17.1.027
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Abstract
The vacuum (i.e., the ground state) of a system in ultrastrong light-matter coupling contains particles that cannot be emitted without any dynamical perturbation and is thus called virtual. We propose a protocol for inducing and observing real mechanical excitations of a mirror enabled by the virtual photons in the ground state of a tripartite system, where a resonant optical cavity is ultrastrongly coupled to a two-level system (qubit) and, at the same time, optomechanically coupled to a mechanical resonator. Real phonons are coherently emitted when the frequency of the two-level system is modulated at a frequency comparable to that of the mechanical resonator and, therefore much lower than the optical frequency. We demonstrate that this hybrid effect is a direct consequence of the virtual photon population in the ground state. Within a classical physics analogy, attaching a weight to a spring only changes its resting position, whereas dynamically modulating the weight makes the system oscillate. In our case, however, the weight is the vacuum itself. We propose and accurately characterize a hybrid superconducting-optomechanical setup based on available state-of-the-art technology, where this effect can be experimentally observed.
Authors / Affiliations: mappings to Contributors and Organizations
See all Organizations.- 1 Fabrizio Minganti,
- 1 2 Alberto Mercurio,
- 2 Fabio Mauceri,
- 1 Marco Scigliuzzo,
- 2 Salvatore Savasta,
- 1 Vincenzo Savona
- 1 École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne [EPFL]
- 2 Université de messine / University of Messina [UNIME]
- Army Research Office (ARO) (through Organization: United States Army Research Laboratory [ARL])
- Schweizerischer Nationalfonds zur Förderung der Wissenschaftlichen Forschung / Swiss National Science Foundation [SNF]
- École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne [EPFL]