Abstract
Optomechanical sensors are capable of transducing external perturbations to resolvable optical signals. A particular regime of interest is that of high-bandwidth force detection, where an impulse is delivered to the system over a short period of time. Exceedingly sensitive impulse detection has been proposed to observe very weak signals like those due to long-range interactions with dark matter that require much higher sensitivities than current sensors can provide. Quantum resources to go beyond the traditional standard quantum limit of these sensors include squeezing of the light used to transduce the signal, backaction evasion by measuring the optimal quadrature, and quantum nondemolition (QND) measurements that reduce backaction directly. These methods have been developed in the context of gravitational wave detection for target frequencies in the audio band range. Here, we provide the theoretical limits to quantum noise reduction for higher and broader frequency targets, such as those from dark matter signals, while combining quantum-enhanced readout techniques based on squeezed light and QND measurements with optomechanical sensors. We demonstrate that backaction evasion through QND techniques dramatically reduces the technical challenges presented when using squeezed light for broadband force detection, paving the way for combining multiple quantum noise reduction techniques for enhanced sensitivity in the context of impulse metrology.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Article number | 062623 |
| Journal | Physical Review A |
| Volume | 111 |
| Issue number | 6 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - Jun 2025 |
Funding
We thank P. Shawhan, D. Carney, and J. Kunjummen for helpful conversations. S.G. is supported by the Physics Frontier Center at the Joint Quantum Institute, which is funded through the National Science Foundation (Award No. 1430094). Support for S.G. and J.M.T. was provided by the U.S. DOE Office of Science, Office of High Energy Physics, QuantISED program (under Grant No. FWP ERKAP63). This work was performed in part at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, managed by UT-Battelle, LLC, under Contract No. DE-AC05-00OR22725 for the U.S. Department of Energy. Support for R.C.P. and postdoc support for S.H. was provided by the U.S. DOE Office of Science, Office of High Energy Physics, QuantISED program (under Grant No. FWP ERKAP63). Support for C.E.M., A.M.M., and postdoc support for M.A.F. was provided by the U.S. DOE Office of Science, National Quantum Information Science Research Centers, Quantum Science Center. The publisher acknowledges the U.S. government license to provide public access under the DOE Public Access Plan .