Hybrid Systems for the Generation of Nonclassical Mechanical States via Quadratic Interactions

We present a method to implement two-phonon interactions between mechanical resonators and spin qubits in hybrid setups, and show that these systems can be applied for the generation of nonclassical mechanical states even in the presence of dissipation. In particular, we demonstrate that the implementation of a two-phonon Jaynes-Cummings Hamiltonian under coherent driving of the qubit yields a dissipative phase transition with similarities to the one predicted in the model of the degenerate parametric oscillator: beyond a certain threshold in the driving amplitude, the driven-dissipative system sustains a mixed steady state consisting of a "jumping cat," i.e., a cat state undergoing random jumps between two phases. We consider realistic setups and show that, in samples within reach of current technology, the system features nonclassical transient states, characterized by a negative Wigner function, that persist during timescales of fractions of a second.