Enhancement of few-photon optomechanical effects with cross-Kerr nonlinearity

Abstract

Few-photon optomechanical effects not only are important physical evidence for understanding the radiation-pressure interaction between photons and mechanical oscillation, but also have wide potential applications in modern quantum technology. Here we study the few-photon optomechanical effects including photon blockade and generation of the Schr\"odinger cat states under the assistance of a cross-Kerr interaction, which is an inherent interaction accompanied by the optomechanical coupling in a generalized optomechanical system. By exactly diagonalizing the generalized optomechanical Hamiltonian and calculating its unitary evolution operator, we find the physical mechanism of the enhancement of photon blockade and single-photon mechanical displacement. The quantum properties in this generalized optomechanical system are studied by investigating the second-order correlation function of the cavity field and calculating the Wigner function and the probability distribution of the rotated quadrature operator for the mechanical mode. We also study the influence of the dissipations on the few-photon optomechanical effects.