Phonon Blockade in a Hybrid Quadratically Coupled Optomechanical System

Abstract

Phonon statistics in a hybrid optomechanical system, where a mechanical resonator is quadratically coupled to a cavity and couples with another resonator via Coulomb interaction is studied. It is found that the conventional and unconventional phonon blockade can be both achieved at the same parameter regime, which is confirmed by analytical and numerical results. By analyzing the energy level structure, it is found that the anharmonicity of the system is the joint action of both the Coulomb interaction and the optomechanical coupling, where the nonlinearity introduced by the latter has a more significant effect on one branch of the conventional phonon blockade. In addition, the phonon blockade can be enhanced by introducing the mechanical parametric amplifier with optimal parameters, where the physical mechanism underlying comes from the multi-pathway destructive interference. It is found that the phonon blockade is fragile toward thermal noise due to the weak quantum interference, which can be overcome by increasing the driving strength and applying the mechanical parametric amplifier with suitable parameters. This work may provide a way to manipulate the phonon blockade and can be helpful to the application of quantum information processing.