Preparing ground states and squeezed states of nanomechanical cantilevers by fast dissipation

Abstract

We propose a protocol that enables strong coupling between a flux qubit and the quantized motion of a magnetized nanomechanical cantilever. The flux qubit is driven by microwave fields with suitable parameters to induce sidebands, which will lead to the desired coupling. We show that the nanomechanical modes can be cooled to the ground states and the single-mode squeezed vacuum states can be generated via fast dissipation of the flux qubit. In our scheme, the qubit decay plays a positive role and can help drive the system to the target states.