Hybrid photon–phonon blockade

Abstract

We describe a novel type of blockade in a hybrid mode generated by linear coupling of photonic and phononic modes. We refer to this effect as hybrid photon–phonon blockade and show how it can be generated and detected in a driven nonlinear optomechanical superconducting system. Thus, we study boson-number correlations in the photon, phonon, and hybrid modes in linearly coupled microwave and mechanical resonators with a superconducting qubit inserted in one of them. We find such system parameters for which we observe eight types of different combinations of either blockade or tunnelling effects (defined via the sub- and super-Poissonian statistics, respectively) for photons, phonons, and hybrid bosons. In particular, we find that the hybrid photon–phonon blockade can be generated by mixing the photonic and phononic modes which do not exhibit blockade.