Quantum synchronization enhanced via photon hopping in an optomechanical system

Abstract In this paper, we study quantum synchronization in a hybrid optomechanical system that includes photon hopping and atomic ensembles. The covariance matrix method is used to examine synchronization between cavity–cavity, cavity–atom, and cavity–mechanical subsystems. Our results demonstrate that strong photon hopping improves synchronization by enabling efficient transfer of energy and phase between the coupled modes. Furthermore, we reveal that synchronization exhibits a non-monotonic dependence on both the atomic coupling strength and system detuning, initially increasing up to a critical threshold before gradually declining. In contrast, decoherence effects especially atomic decay rate reduce synchronization by destroying phase coherence. While cavity-mechanical synchronization is heavily suppressed by an increasing thermal phonon number, cavity-cavity and cavity-atomic synchronization remain uniquely robust against thermal noise. Ultimately governed by the competition between coherent coupling and environmental dissipation, these results provide valuable insights into controlling quantum synchronization for future applications in quantum information processing, precision metrology, and scalable hybrid quantum networks.