Regular and chaotic dynamics of nonlinear optomechanical systems controlled by modulated light
Phys. Rev. A 114, 043738 – Published 28 October, 2026
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/wflv-z83h
Abstract
The nonlinear dynamics of a mechanical resonator in an optomechanical system with linear, quadratic, and cubic photon-vibration interactions (with respect to mechanical displacements) in a modulated driving field under conditions of adiabatic elimination of the optical field is studied. Based on the constructed bifurcation diagrams of the mechanical coordinate and the largest Lyapunov exponent as a function of the modulation amplitude, as well as power spectra, phase portraits, and Poincaré sections, regions of regular and chaotic dynamics of the optomechanical system are identified. It is also shown that for a certain modulation amplitude in the presence of all three types of interactions, chaotic dynamics of the mechanical resonator (oscillator) is realized, which is replaced by quasiperiodic oscillations in the absence of cubic interaction, and the system returns to chaotic behavior only if linear interaction remains. This nonmonotonic dependence of chaotic dynamics on the order of nonlinearity originates from the interplay between parametric driving and effective potential reshaping and manifests that nonlinearity does not always enhance chaos. For an optomechanical system in a membrane-in-the-middle configuration, where only quadratic photon-vibration interaction is present, it is demonstrated that at small modulation amplitudes the mechanical oscillator exhibits quasiperiodic motion in each of the wells of a symmetric two-minimum potential, whereas large modulation amplitudes lead to chaotic motion, involving interwell transitions.
