Optomechanics with a position-modulated Kerr-type nonlinear coupling

Cavity optomechanics has proven to be a field of research rich with possibilities for studying motional cooling, squeezing, quantum entanglement, and metrology in solid-state systems. While to date most studies have focused on the modulation of the cavity frequency by the moving element, the emergence of new materials will soon allow us to explore the influences of nonlinear optical effects. We therefore study in this work the effects due to a nonlinear position-modulated self-Kerr interaction and find that this leads to an effective coupling that scales with the square of the photon number, meaning that significant effects appear even for very small nonlinearities. This strong effective coupling can lead to lower powers required for motional cooling and the appearance of multistability in certain regimes.