Optical bistability at lower photon number via photon and phonon interaction in the presence of Kerr nonlinearity

Abstract

Abstract Optical bistability is theoretically analyzed in a hybrid optomechanical system consisting of an optical cavity including a Kerr medium and an optomechanical cavity coupled by direct tunnel coupling. The dynamics of the system is described by Heisenberg–Langevin equations. It is numerically shown that there is a critical value of the Kerr coefficient to observe the bistability of the intracavity intensity for a given coupling rate, and the changing of the Kerr coefficient will lead to the changing of the critical point to observe the bistability as well. In addition, the first critical value to observe bistability becomes larger with the increasing coupling rate between the two cavities. It is also demonstrated that the pump beam required to realize the bistable behavior in the blue sideband regime is significantly smaller than that in the red sideband regime. And the mean intracavity photon number is relatively larger in the red sideband case than that in the blue sideband case. It is remarkable to observe that the mean intracavity photon numbers in both cavities are much lower than that in ordinary situations.