An optomechanical system consists of an optical cavity coupled to a mechanical oscillator. The system used for this work was a silica microsphere. In a silica microsphere, the optical cavity is formed by light that is confined by total internal reflection while circulating around the equator of the sphere. The mechanical oscillator is the mechanical breathing motion of the sphere itself. The optical cavity and mechanical oscillator are coupled by radiation pressure and by the mechanical oscillator physically changing the length of the optical cavity. The optomechanical analog to electromagnetically induced transparency (EIT), known as optomechanically induced transparency (OMIT), has previously been studied in its steady state. One topic of this dissertation is an experimental study of OMIT in the time domain. The results of these experimental demonstrations continue comparisons between EIT and OMIT, while also building a foundation for optomechanical light storage. In OMIT, an off-resonance control laser controls the interaction between on-resonance light and the mechanical oscillator. Optomechanical light storage makes use of this arrangement to store an optical signal as a mechanical excitation, which is then retrieved at a later time as an optical signal. This is done by using two temporally separated off-resonance control laser pulses. This technique is extremely flexible in frequency and displays a storage lifetime on the order of microseconds. Use of optomechanical systems for quantum mechanical applications is hindered by the thermal background noise of the mechanical oscillator. Addressing this issue by first cooling the mechanical oscillator is costly and fraught with difficulties. The final topic presented in this dissertation deals with this issue through the use of an optomechanical dark mode. Two optical modes can interact with the same mechanical mode. The dark mode is a state that couples the two optical modes but is decoupled from the mechanical oscillator. While our specific optomechanical system is limited by its somewhat modest optomechanical cooperativity, this conversion process can, in principle, preserve the quantum state of the signal, even at room temperature, opening the possibility for this technique to be applied in quantum information processing.

This thesis set out to investigate light storage based on dynamic electromagnetically induced transparency (EIT) in a room-temperature atomic ensemble of rubidium as a means to provide a quantum memory for single-photons created by a single rubidium atom coupled to a high-finesse optical resonator. Setting up the light storage medium presented a new addition to the research group's portfolio of experimental techniques and led to investigations of EIT, slow light and stored light in warm rubidium-87 vapour. Lambda level schemes connecting Zeeman or hyperfine substates on the D₁ and D₂ lines were addressed in rubidium vapour cells containing different buffer gases and different isotopic fractions of rubidium-87 and rubidium-85. Single beam spectroscopy with a weak probe was used to characterise the vapour cells. A numerical method to fit the D line spectrum to a theoretical model to include isotopic fractions and collisional broadening of a buffer gas has been implemented. Temperature and isotopic fractions could be reliably extracted from the fit parameters. For an offset-stabilisation of two lasers to address a lambda level scheme connecting the two different hyperfine groundstates in rubidium a phase locked loop including a frequency divider has been designed and implemented. Light storage and retrieval has been demonstrated using a Zeeman scheme on the D1 line. Two microsecond long classical light pulses containing one million photons on average were stored and retrieved with an efficiency of 15% after a delay of one microsecond. Several methods of attenuating the strong co-propagating control laser beam to allow for lowering the signal pulse intensity in future experiments are discussed.

<p>  </p> <p>A harmonic oscillator is a ubiquitous tool in various disciplines of engineering and physics for sensing and energy transduction. The degrees of freedom, low noise oscillation, and efficient input-output coupling are important metrics when designing sensors and transducers using such oscillators. The ultimate examples of such oscillators are quantum mechanical oscillators coherently transducing information or energy. Atoms are oscillators whose degrees of freedom can be controlled and probed coherently by means of light. Elegant techniques developed during the last few decades have enabled us to use atoms, for example, to build exquisite quantum sensors such as clocks with the precision of <1 second error over the lifetime of the universe, to store and transduce information of various forms and also to develop quantum processors. Similar to atoms, mechanical oscillators can also be controlled ultimately to their single vibrational quanta and be used for similar sensing and transduction applications.</p> <p><br></p> <p>In this thesis, we explore both atomic and mechanical systems and develop a toolbox to build an effective atom-light interface and light-oscillator interface for controlling such atomic and mechanical oscillators and use them in sensing and storage applications. Primarily, we study two disparate platforms: 1) rare-earth ions in solids integrated into photonic chips as a compact and heterogeneous platform and 2) nanoscopic and macroscopic oscillators interfaced with light and magnetic field to isolate them from environmental noise. </p> <p><br></p> <p>Rare earth (RE) ions in crystals have been identified as robust optical centers and promising candidates for quantum communication and transduction applications. Lithium niobate (LN), a novel crystalline host of RE ions, is considered as a viable material for photonic system integration because of its electro-optic and integration capability. This thesis first experimentally reports the activation and characterization of LN crystals implanted with Yb and Er ions and describes their scalable integration with a silicon photonic chip with waveguide and resonator structures. The evanescent coupling of light emitted from Er ions with optical modes of waveguide and microcavity and modified photoluminescence (PL) of Er ions from the integrated on-chip Er:LN-Si-SiN photonic device with quality factor of 104 have been observed at room temperature. This integrated platform can ultimately enable developing quantum memory and provide a path to integrate more photonic components on a single chip for applications in quantum communication and transduction.</p> <p><br></p> <p>Optomechanical systems are also considered as candidates for light storage and sensing. In this thesis, we also present results of the theoretical study of coherent light storage in an array of nanomechanical resonators. The majority of the thesis is focusing on an optomechanical sensing experiment based on levitation. An oscillator well isolated from environmental noise can be used to sense force, inertia, torque, and magnetic field with high sensitivity as the interaction with these quantities can change the amplitude or frequency of the oscillator’s vibration, which can be accurately measured by light. It has been proposed that such levitated macroscopic objects could be used as quantum sensors and transducers at their quantum ground states. They are also proposed as a platform to test fundamental physics such as detecting gravitational waves, observing macroscopic quantum entanglement, verifying the spontaneous collapse models, and searching for dark matter.</p> <p><br></p> <p>In particular, we consider superconducting levitation of macroscopic objects in vacuum whose positions are measured by light. We build an optomechanical platform based on a levitated small high reflective (HR)-coated mirror above a superconductor disk. We use this levitated mirror at ambient conditions to detect the magnetic field with a sensitivity on the order of <em>pT/sqrt(Hz).</em> Moreover, the levitated mirror is used as the end mirror of a Fabry–Pérot cavity to create an optical resonance that could be used to study coherent radiation pressure forces. The platform provides a sensitive tool to measure the various forces exerted on the mirror and it offers the possibility of the coherent optical trapping of macroscopic objects and precision gravity sensing. Moreover, we study the nonlinear dissipation and mode coupling of a levitated HR-coated magnetic mirror above a superconducting disk in vacuum conditions. We observe that by exciting one vibrational mode of the mirror, the vibrational noise of another mode can be significantly suppressed by a factor of 60. We attribute this unique noise suppression mechanism to the mode coupling and nonlinear dissipation caused by the driven magnetic inhomogeneity of the levitated object. Such a suppression mechanism can enable cooling certain modes independent of their detection and position in the spectrum, which may be promising for precision sensing applications.</p>