We propose a spectrometric method to reconstruct the motional states of mechanical modes in optomechanics. This is achieved by detecting the single-photon emission and scattering spectra of the optomechanical cavity. Owing to an optomechanical coupling, the a priori phonon-state distributions contribute to the spectral magnitude, and hence we can infer information on the phonon states from the measured spectral data. When the single-photon optomechanical-coupling strength is moderately larger

more »

... an the mechanical frequency, then our method works well for a wide range of cavity-field decay rates, irrespective of whether or not the system is in the resolved-sideband regime.