Observability of radiation-pressure shot noise in optomechanical systems

We present a theoretical study of an experiment designed to detect radiation-pressure shot noise in an optomechanical system. Our model consists of a coherently driven optical cavity mode that is coupled to a mechanical oscillator. We examine the cross-correlation between two quadratures of the output field from the cavity. We determine under which circumstances radiation-pressure shot noise can be detected by a measurement of this cross-correlation. This is done in the general case of nonzero detuning between the frequency of the drive and the cavity resonance frequency. We study the qualitative features of the different contributions to the cross-correlator and provide quantitative figures of merit for the relative importance of the radiation-pressure shot noise contribution to other contributions. We also propose a modified setup of this experiment relevant to the "membrane-in-the-middle" geometry, which potentially can avoid the problems of static bistability and classical noise in the drive.