Thermodynamic limits for optomechanical systems with conservative potentials

Abstract

The mechanical force from light -- radiation pressure -- provides an intrinsic nonlinear interaction. Consequently, optomechanical systems near their steady state, such as the canonical optical spring, can display non-analytic behavior as a function of external parameters. This non-analyticity, a key feature of thermodynamic phase transitions, suggests that there could be an effective thermodynamic description of optomechanical systems. Here we explicitly define the thermodynamic limit for optomechanical systems and derive a set of sufficient constraints on the system parameters as the mechanical system grows large. As an example, we show how these constraints can be satisfied in a system with ${\mathbb{Z}}_2$ symmetry and derive a free energy, allowing us to characterize this as an equilibrium phase transition.

9 pages, 3 figures

References in corpus (3)

• Strong dispersive coupling of a high finesse cavity to a micromechanical membrane
• Cold atoms in cavity-generated dynamical optical potentials
• Dispersive optomechanics: a membrane inside a cavity