Optomechanical preparation of photon number-squeezed states with a pair of thermal reservoirs of opposite temperatures

Abstract

Photon number-squeezed states are of significant value in fundamental quantum research and have a wide range of applications in quantum metrology. Most of their preparation mechanisms require precise control of quantum dynamics and are less tolerant to dissipation. We propose a mechanism that is not subject to these restraints. In contrast to common approaches, we exploit the self-balancing between two types of dissipation induced by positive- and negative-temperature reservoirs to generate steady states with sub-Poissonian statistical distributions of photon numbers. We also show how to implement this mechanism with cavity optomechanical systems. The quality of the prepared photon number-squeezed state is estimated by our theoretical model combined with realistic parameters for various typical optomechanical systems.