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We investigate the optomechanical properties of a periodic array of identical scatterers placed inside an optical cavity and extend our previous results [Xuereb, Genes, and Dantan, Phys. Rev. Lett. 109, 223601 (2012)]. We show that operating at the points where the array is transmissive results in linear optomechanical coupling strengths between the cavity field and collective motional modes of the array that may be several orders of magnitude larger than is possible with an equivalent reflective ensemble. We describe and interpret these effects in detail and investigate the nature of the scaling laws of the coupling strengths for the different transmissive points in various regimes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We present a scheme to strongly enhance the readout sensitivity of the squared displacement of a mobile scatterer placed in a Fabry-Pérot cavity. We investigate the largely unexplored regime of cavity electrodynamics in which a highly reflective element positioned between the end mirrors of a symmetric Fabry-Pérot resonator strongly modifies the cavity response function, such that two longitudinal modes with different spatial parity are brought close to frequency degeneracy and interfere in the cavity output field. In the case of a movable middle reflector we show that the interference in this generic "optical coalescence" phenomenon gives rise to an enhanced frequency shift of the peaks of the cavity transmission that can be exploited in optomechanics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We investigate a hybrid optomechanical system composed of a micromechanical oscillator as a movable membrane and an atomic three-level ensemble within an optical cavity. We show that a suitably tailored cavity field response via electromagnetically induced transparency (EIT) in the atomic medium allows for strong coupling of the membrane's mechanical oscillations to the collective atomic ground-state spin. This facilitates ground-state cooling of the membrane motion, quantum state mapping, and robust atom-membrane entanglement even for cavity widths larger than the mechanical resonance frequency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Linear optomechanical photon-phonon couplings in the membrane-in-the-middle setup can be enhanced by taking a multielement approach as it was recently shown [A. Xuereb, C. Genes, and A. Dantan, Phys. Rev. Lett. 109, 223601 (2012)]. The particular example considered consists of a periodic array of membranes embedded in a high-finesse optical cavity and operating in the transmissive regime, i.e., around resonances of the compound cavity-membrane system. Here we propose further improvements in such a setup by breaking the translational invariance of the array, i.e., by considering quasiperiodic arrays with engineered quadratic spatial defects in the membrane positions. The localization of light modes induced by the defect combined with the access of the aforementioned transmissive regime window can lead to additional enhancement of the strength of both linear and quadratic optomechanical couplings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We investigate the dynamics of a mechanical resonator in which is embedded an ensemble of two-level systems interacting with an optical cavity field. We show that this hybrid approach to optomechanics allows for enhanced effective interactions between the mechanics and the cavity field, leading, for instance, to ground-state cooling of the mechanics, even in regimes, like the unresolved sideband regime, in which standard radiation pressure cooling would be inefficient. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We theoretically investigate the dynamics of a gas of strongly interacting Rydberg atoms subject to a time-domain Ramsey interferometry protocol. The many-body dynamics is governed by an Ising-type Hamiltonian with long-range interactions of tunable strength. We analyze and model the contrast degradation and phase accumulation of the Ramsey signal and identify scaling laws for varying interrogation times, ensemble densities, and ensemble dimensionalities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]