New article in Nature Physics
Our article "High-purity quantum optomechanics at room temperature" has just been published in Nature Physics!
In this experimental work, our collaborators at the team of Lukas Novotny at ETH Zürich demonstrate the cooling of the librational oscillations of an anisotropic nanoparticle around its equilibrium orientation down to their quantum ground state. This is achieved by optically levitating the nanoparticle inside an optical cavity, thus generating a strong optomechanical interaction by coherent scattering of photons from the trapping laser into the cavity. This room-temperature experiment shows a record-low occupation of 0.04 phonons, outperforming even optomechanics experiements at cryogenic temperatures. This work required us and our collaborators at ICFO to theoretically model laser phase noise which becomes relevant at these low occupations.
Check the press release here!
Picture credit: Dr Lorenzo Dania, ETH Zürich
