Title:Influence functional for two mirrors interacting via radiation pressure

Abstract:We study the effective dynamics of two mirrors, forming an optical cavity, and interacting with the cavity field via radiation pressure. We pursue a perturbative influence functional approach to trace out the degrees-of-freedom of the field, and obtain the second order effective action for the system composed by the mirrors. We find that the interaction between the mirrors is mediated by pairs of field modes, which combine in such a way to give rise to two different interaction channels. We find that the quantum and thermal fluctuations of the cavity field result in coloured, Gaussian stochastic noises acting on the mirrors. To each of these noises is associated a dissipative effect, and the corresponding power spectra and susceptibilities are related via generalized fluctuation-dissipation relations. We finally demonstrate that the dynamics of the mirrors admits a stochastic interpretation, and give the relative quantum Langevin equations.