Advances in Levitated Optomechanics

Dear Colleagues,

Levitated optomechanics marked by accelerating developments over the past decade reveals its potential applications for fundamental research and metrology. This paradigm enables investigations including macroscopic quantum phenomena, nonlinear thermodynamics, ultrasensitive force/torque detection, gravitational wave astronomy, and many-body physics.

The platform leverages precision optical manipulation to trap dielectric micro- or nanoparticles in high-gradient potential wells within vacuum environments. Benefiting from the high isolation from environmental disturbances and controllability of coupling between the particles and the background gas, it enables unprecedented control over mechanical motion, facilitating explorations of both classical and quantum phenomena. Meanwhile, the ability to work at room temperature simplifies the experimental operation and system maintenance. In recent years, innovations in Paul trap architectures and magnetic levitation techniques have contributed to the studies in a unique way that eliminates the thermal effect induced by the absorption of the trapping laser and supports various types of materials, such as nitrogen-vacancy (NV) nanodiamonds.

Classical studies focus on mechanical motion, i.e., center-of-mass motion, libration, rotation, and their couplings, while quantum regimes require cooling the particle’s center-of-mass motion or other motion modes to the ground state. Techniques including feedback cooling suppress thermal noise to milliKelvin temperatures, revealing quantum signatures such as zero-point fluctuations. Additionally, the system’s high force/torque sensitivity enables groundbreaking applications. Moreover, the internal degrees of freedom control and their coupling with the external degrees of freedom further expand the research contents.

This Special Issue showcases the research spanning methodological advancements, novel experimental techniques, innovative system architectures, emergent physical phenomena, and creative theoretical frameworks in this field.

Dr. Xudong Yu
Guest Editor

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• levitated optomechanics
• optical tweezers
• paul trap
• magnetic levitation
• feedback cooling
• quantum back-action
• high-precision sensing
• macroscopic quantum phenomenon
• quantum gravity tests
• dark matter detection
• nonlinear dynamics
• stochastic motion
• multi-particle array