@phdthesis{Mari2012,
  author    = {Mari, Andrea},
  title     = {Signatures of non-classicality in optomechanical systems},
  url       = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus-59814},
  school      = {Universit{\"a}t Potsdam},
  year      = {2012},
  abstract  = {This thesis contains several theoretical studies on optomechanical systems, i.e. physical devices where mechanical degrees of freedom are coupled with optical cavity modes. This optomechanical interaction, mediated by radiation pressure, can be exploited for cooling and controlling mechanical resonators in a quantum regime. The goal of this thesis is to propose several new ideas for preparing meso- scopic mechanical systems (of the order of 10^15 atoms) into highly non-classical states. In particular we have shown new methods for preparing optomechani-cal pure states, squeezed states and entangled states. At the same time, proce-dures for experimentally detecting these quantum effects have been proposed. In particular, a quantitative measure of non classicality has been defined in terms of the negativity of phase space quasi-distributions. An operational al- gorithm for experimentally estimating the non-classicality of quantum states has been proposed and successfully applied in a quantum optics experiment. The research has been performed with relatively advanced mathematical tools related to differential equations with periodic coefficients, classical and quantum Bochner's theorems and semidefinite programming. Nevertheless the physics of the problems and the experimental feasibility of the results have been the main priorities.},
  language  = {en}
}
@article{MariEisert2012,
  author    = {Mari, Andrea and Eisert, Jens},
  title     = {Positive wigner functions render classical simulation of quantum computation efficient},
  series = {Physical review letters},
  volume    = {109},
  journal   = {Physical review letters},
  number    = {23},
  publisher = {American Physical Society},
  address   = {College Park},
  issn      = {0031-9007},
  doi       = {10.1103/PhysRevLett.109.230503},
  pages     = {5},
  year      = {2012},
  abstract  = {We show that quantum circuits where the initial state and all the following quantum operations can be represented by positive Wigner functions can be classically efficiently simulated. This is true both for continuous-variable as well as discrete variable systems in odd prime dimensions, two cases which will be treated on entirely the same footing. Noting the fact that Clifford and Gaussian operations preserve the positivity of the Wigner function, our result generalizes the Gottesman-Knill theorem. Our algorithm provides a way of sampling from the output distribution of a computation or a simulation, including the efficient sampling from an approximate output distribution in the case of sampling imperfections for initial states, gates, or measurements. In this sense, this work highlights the role of the positive Wigner function as separating classically efficiently simulable systems from those that are potentially universal for quantum computing and simulation, and it emphasizes the role of negativity of the Wigner function as a computational resource.},
  language  = {en}
}