The study of the quantum to classical transition is of fundamental as well as technological importance, and focusses on mesoscopic devices, with a size for which either classical physics or quantum physics can be brought to dominate. A particularly diverse selection of such devices is available in cavity quantum-optomechanics. We show that these can be leveraged for the study of dynamical-tunneling in a quantum chaotic system. This effect probes the quantum to classical transition deeply, since tunneling rates sensitively depend on the ability of the quantum system to resolve the underlying classical phase space. We show that the effective Planck’s constant, which determines this phase space resolution, can be varied over orders of magnitude as a function of tunable parameters in an opto-mechanical experiment. Specifically, we consider a membrane-in-the-middle configuration of a mechanical oscillator within an optical cavity, where the intracavity field is modulated periodically by the external laser source. We demonstrate that a mixed regular and chaotic phase space can be engineered in one spatial dimension, through a significant quartic opto-mechanical interaction. For that case, we explore the expected dynamical tunneling rates using Floquet theory and map out values of the effective Planck’s constant that should be within practical reach.

中文翻译：

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纳米机械振荡器的动态隧穿

量子到经典跃迁的研究既具有基本意义，又具有技术重要性，并且关注介观设备，其大小可以使经典物理学或量子物理学成为主导。在腔体量子光力学中，可以使用这种器件的特别多种选择。我们证明了这些可以被用于量子混沌系统中的动态隧道研究。由于隧穿速率敏感地取决于量子系统解析潜在的经典相空间的能力，因此该效应对量子向经典跃迁进行了深入探测。我们表明，确定该相空间分辨率的有效普朗克常数可以在光机械实验中随可调参数的变化而在数量级上变化。特别，我们考虑了光腔内机械振荡器的中间膜结构，其中腔内场由外部激光源周期性地调制。我们证明，可以通过显着的四次光机械相互作用在一个空间维度上设计混合的规则和混沌相空间。对于这种情况，我们使用Floquet理论探索了预期的动态隧穿速率，并绘制出了应该在实际范围内的有效Planck常数值。