Macroscopic Quantum Mechanics: Theory and Experimental Concepts of Optomechanics

Understand

Rapid experimental progress has recently allowed the use of light to prepare macroscopic mechanical objects into nearly pure quantum states.

• This research field of quantum optomechanics opens new doors toward testing quantum mechanics, and possibly other laws of physics, in new regimes.
• In the first part of this paper, I will review a set of techniques of quantum measurement theory that are often used to analyze quantum optomechanical systems.
• Some of these techniques were originally designed to analyze how a classical driving force passes through a quantum system, and can eventually be detected with optimal signal-to-noise ratio --- while others focus more on the quantum state evolution of a mechanical object under continuous monitoring.