Speaker: Prof. Lukas Novotny, ETH Zurich.
Vijay Jain (a), Martin Frimmer (a), Erik Hebestreit (a), Jan Gieseler (a), Romain Quidant (b), Christoph Dellago (c), and Lukas Novotny (a)
(a) ETH Zurich, Photonics Laboratory, 8093 Zurich, Switzerland.
(b) ICFO, Mediterranean Technology Park, 08860 Castelldefels, Spain.
(c) University of Vienna, Faculty of Physics, 1090 Vienna, Austria.
I discuss our experiments with optically levitated nanoparticles in ultrahigh vacuum. Using active parametric feedback we cool the particle’s center-of-mass temperature to T ∼ 100μK and reach mean quantum occupation numbers of n ∼ 15. I show that mechanical quality factors of Q = 109 can be reached and that damping is dominated by photon recoil heating. The vacuum-trapped nanoparticle forms an ideal model system for studying non- equilibrium processes, nonlinear interactions, and ultrasmall forces.
Figure 1: Photograph of light scattered from a laser-trapped diamond nanoparticle.