Review of cavity optomechanics in the weak-coupling regime: from linearization to intrinsic nonlinear interactions

Recently, cavity optomechanics has become a rapidly developing research field exploring the coupling between the optical field and mechanical oscillation. Cavity optomechanical systems were predicted to exhibit rich and nontrivial effects due to the nonlinear optomechanical interaction. However, most progress during the past years have focused on the linearization of the optomechanical interaction, which ignored the intrinsic nonlinear nature of the optomechanical coupling. Exploring nonlinear optomechanical interaction is of growing interest in both classical and quantum mechanisms, and nonlinear optomechanical interaction has emerged as an important new frontier in cavity optomechanics. It enables many applications ranging from single-photon sources to generation of nonclassical states. Here, we give a brief review of these developments and discuss some of the current challenges in this field.