Characterization of non-linearities through mechanical squeezing in levitated optomechanics

Abstract

We demonstrate a technique to estimate the strength of nonlinearities present in the trapping potential of an optically levitated nanoparticle. By applying a brief pulsed reduction in the trapping laser power of the system such as to squeeze the phase space distribution and then matching the time evolution of the shape of the phase space distribution to that of numerical simulations, one can estimate the strength of the nonlinearity present in the system. We apply this technique to estimate the strength of the Duffing nonlinearity present in the optical trapping potential.