Static Casimir effect as one of the most interesting purely quantum effects is very general and may bring about novel physical phenomena and find applications in various fields of physics. Here, we investigate theoretically the generation of optical chaos induced by the static Casimir effect in an optomechanical system. We show that the dynamic behavior of the cavity field experiences the conversion from period to chaos motion under the condition of properly adjusting the static Casimir effect, even if the driven optical fields are comparatively weak. Furthermore, our numerical calculation with experimentally attainable parameters also shows that compared with the standard bare optomechanical system, the optical threshold of chaos is reduced about one order when the static Casimir effect is applied. Beyond the significance in broadening the scope of cavity optomechanics, this finding provides a different perspective to the study of optical chaos and lays a foundation for using static Casimir effect to comprehend the nonlinear characteristics of the optomechanical system. In particular, our results may find potential applications in chaos-based communication.

作为最有趣的纯量子效应之一，静态卡西米尔效应非常普遍，可能会带来新的物理现象并在物理的各个领域中找到应用。在这里，我们从理论上研究了光机械系统中由静态卡西米尔效应引起的光学混沌的产生。我们表明，即使驱动光场相对较弱，在适当调整静态卡西米尔效应的情况下，腔场的动态行为也会经历从周期运动到混沌运动的转换。此外，我们使用实验可达到的参数进行的数值计算还表明，与标准的裸光机械系统相比，当应用静态卡西米尔效应时，混沌的光学阈值降低了大约一个数量级。这一发现除了对拓宽腔体光力学研究范围具有重要意义之外，还为光学混沌研究提供了不同的视角，并为利用静态卡西米尔效应理解光机系统的非线性特性奠定了基础。特别是，我们的结果可能会在基于混沌的通信中找到潜在的应用。