We investigate the feasibility of correlating an optical cavity field and a vibrational phonon mode. A laser pumped quantum dot fixed on a nanomechanical resonator beam interacts as a whole with the optical resonator mode. When the quantum dot variables are faster than the optical and phonon ones, we obtain a final master equation describing the involved modes only. Increasing the temperature, which directly affects the vibrational degrees of freedom, one can as well influence the cavity photon intensity, i.e., the optical and phonon modes are correlated. Furthermore, the corresponding Cauchy-Schwarz inequality is violated demonstrating the quantum nature of those correlations.

• Received 21 February 2014

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevA.89.053803