Quantum Properties of a Nanomechanical Oscillator

Abstract

We study the quantum properties of a nanomechanical oscillator via the squeezing of the oscillator amplitude. The static longitudinal compressive force $F_0$ close to a critical value at the Euler buckling instability leads to an anharmonic term in the Hamiltonian and thus the squeezing properties of the nanomechanical oscillator are to be obtained from the Hamiltonian of the form $H= a^†a+β(a^†+a)^4/4$. This Hamiltonian has no exact solution unlike the other known models of nonlinear interactions of the forms $a^{†2}a^2$, $(a^†a)^2$ and $a^{\dag4}+a^4-(a^{\dag2}a^2+a^2a^{\dag2})$ previously employed in quantum optics to study squeezing. Here we solve the Schrödinger equation numerically and show that in-phase quadrature gets squeezed for both ground state and coherent states. The squeezing can be controlled by bringing $F_0$ close to or far from the critical value $F_c$. We further study the effect of the transverse driving force on the squeezing in nanomechanical oscillator.