Quantum entanglement of anharmonic oscillators

We investigate the quantum entanglement dynamics of undriven anharmonic (nonlinear) oscillators with quartic potentials. We first consider the indirect interaction between two such nonlinear oscillators mediated by a third, linear oscillator and show that this leads to a time-varying entanglement of the oscillators, the entanglement being strongly influenced by the nonlinear oscillator dynamics. In the presence of dissipation, the role of nonlinearity is strongly manifested in the steady-state dynamics of the indirectly coupled anharmonic oscillators. We further illustrate the effect of nonlinearities by studying the coupling between an electromagnetic field in a cavity and one movable mirror which is modelled as a nonlinear oscillator. For this case, we present a full analytical treatment, which is valid in a regime where both the nonlinearity and the coupling due to radiation pressure are weak. We show that, without the need of any conditional measurements on the cavity field, the state of the movable mirror is non-classical as a result of the combined effect of the intrinsic nonlinearity and the radiation-pressure coupling. This interaction is also shown to be responsible for squeezing the movable mirror's position quadrature beyond the minimum uncertainty state even when the mirror is initially prepared in its ground state.