The notion of nanomachines has recently emerged to engage and use collective action of ensembles of nanoscale components or systems. Here we present a heat-gradient driven nanomachine concept which through appropriate coupling between quantum nanosystems is capable of realizing and maintaining an inversion. Based on a Lindblad form of the quantum master equation with a semiclassical coupling to the lattice displacement phonon field we show that this positive inversion can be harnessed to generate coherent optomechanical oscillations and phonon lasing.

• Received 6 September 2018

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevA.98.053855