  We generalize a proposal for detecting single phonon transitions in a single
nanoelectromechanical system (NEMS) to include the intrinsic anharmonicity of
each mechanical oscillator. In this scheme two NEMS oscillators are coupled via
a term quadratic in the amplitude of oscillation for each oscillator. One NEMS
oscillator is driven and strongly damped and becomes a transducer for phonon
number in the other measured oscillator. We derive the conditions for this
measurement scheme to be quantum limited and find a condition on the size of
the anharmonicity. We also derive the relation between the phase diffusion
back-action noise due to number measurement and the localization time for the
measured system to enter a phonon number eigenstate. We relate both these time
scales to the strength of the measured signal, which is an induced current
proportional to the position of the readout oscillator.
