We investigate the optical-response properties of a levitated optomechanical cavity coupled to a higher order excited atomic medium. The cavity field driven through the atom-field interaction is responsible for trapping a dielectric nanosphere, whose steady-state position is biased by the Coulomb force between the nanosphere and the cavity wall. We show that the phenomena of optomechanically induced transparency (OMIT) and amplification can be generated from the output probe field in the presence of an effective optomechanical coupling between the nanosphere and the cavity field. Further, the width of the transparency window increases with increasing strength of the effective optomechanical coupling, which is controlled easily by varying the Coulomb interaction and the radius of the nanosphere. In particular, when the higher order excitation of the atomic medium is included, a large driving of the atomic ensemble but a relatively small atom-field detuning can be applied to help observe the OMIT behavior in the hybrid system.

• Received 29 October 2015

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevA.93.023841