Abstract

When a light beam interacts with Kerr medium inside an optical cavity, its quantum fluctuations are squeezed.¹ One can show that perfect squeezing can be obtained close to the turning points of the bistability curve. In order to implement such a scheme, one needs perfect Kerr media (with no losses, infinite frequency bandwidth and no excess noise) that are not available to date.² We study here a new kind of Kerr medium, in which the nonlinearity has a mechanical origin: if a mirror is free to move, the radiation pressure will induce a coupling between its position and the intensity of the light beam, thus modifying the optical path in an intensity-dependent way.

© 1994 Optical Society of America