Route to Chaos in Optomechanics

We establish the emergence of chaotic motion in optomechanical systems. Chaos appears at negative detuning for experimentally accessible values of the pump power and other system parameters. We describe the sequence of period-doubling bifurcations that leads to chaos and state the experimentally observable signatures in the optical spectrum. In addition to the semiclassical dynamics, we analyze the possibility of chaotic motion in the quantum regime. We find that quantum mechanics protects the optomechanical system against irregular dynamics, such that simple periodic orbits reappear and replace the classically chaotic motion. In this way observation of the dynamical signatures makes it possible to pin down the crossover from quantum to classical mechanics.