Single-photon-induced phonon blockade in a hybrid spin-optomechanical system

Abstract

We explore the photon-controlled phonon statistics in a hybrid spin-optomechanical system. Here the proposed phonon blockade is based on the nonlinearity of system induced by the strong spin-mechanical coupling. Our approach involves introducing an ancillary quadratic optomechanical coupling (i.e., the cavity field quadratically coupled to mechanical motion) and simultaneously considering the cavity field with a single photon. By injecting the auxiliary photons, one can not only enhance the spin-resonator interaction, but also realize fully switchable phonon blockade. This work offers an approach to manipulate phonon statistics with photons, which should inspire the engineering of new single-phonon quantum devices and have potential applications in the future hybrid photon-phonon quantum networks.