Macroscopic tunneling of a membrane in an optomechanical double-well potential

The macroscopic tunneling of an optomechanical membrane is considered. A cavity mode which couples quadratically to the membranes position can create highly tunable adiabatic double-well potentials, which together with the high Q-factors of such membranes render the observation of macroscopic tunneling possible. A suitable, pulsed measurement scheme using a linearly coupled mode of the cavity for the verification of the effect is studied.Comment: 5 pages, 5 figure

Mesoscopic superposition and sub-Planck-scale structure in molecular wave packets

We demonstrate the possibility of realizing sub-Planck-scale structures in the mesoscopic superposition of molecular wave packets involving vibrational levels. The time evolution of the wave packet, taken here as the SU(2) coherent state of the Morse potential describing hydrogen iodide molecules, produces macroscopicquantum- superposition-like states, responsible for the above phenomenon. We investigate the phase-space dynamics of the coherent state through the Wigner function approach and identify the interference phenomena behind the sub-Planck-scale structures. The optimal parameter ranges are specified for observing these features.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figure