Remote preparation of motional Schrödinger cat states via dissipatively-driven non-Gaussian mechanical entanglement

Abstract: In this paper, we propose a driven-dissipative scheme for generating non-Gaussian mechanical entangled states and remotely preparing mechanical Schr\"{o}dinger cat states via the entanglement. The system under study consists of a cavity optomechanical setup with two frequency-mismatched mechanical oscillators coupled to a cavity field driven by a bichromatic pump. We show that under proper conditions, an effective Hamiltonian for nondegenerate parametric downconversion involving the two mechanical oscillators and the cavity field can be engineered. We demonstrate analytically and numerically that the cavity dissipation drives the mechanical oscillators into a steady-state pair-coherent state. The no-Gaussianity and nonclassical properties, including Winger negativity, entanglement and quantum steering, of the achieved non-Gaussian mechanical state are investigated in detail. We further show that homodyne detection on one mechanical oscillator enables the remote generation of Schr\"{o}dinger cat states in the other oscillator through the non-Gaussian mechanical entanglement. As we show, this detection can be implemented by transferring the mechanical state to the output field of an auxiliary probe cavity coupled to the target oscillator, followed by homodyne detection on the output field. We also discuss the robustness of the mechanical entangled states and cat states against thermal fluctuations. Our findings establish a feasible approach for the dissipative and remote preparation of mechanical nonclassical states.