Optical levitation in structured light
Harnessing the spatial degrees of freedom of the light trap and manipulate nano-particles.
Optical levitation of nano- and micro-sized objects provides a powerful platform for quantum sensing devices. The absence of mechanical contact with the thermal environment enables ultra-high quality factors and additional degrees of freedom with respect to clamped nanomechanical systems.
Levitated particles also offer unique opportunities to explore fundamental physics, including quantum superposition at unprecedent mass scales, nonequilibrium dynamics in time-varying potentials, and many-body dynamics.
We focus our research in tayloring the spatial modes of the trapping beam to achieve maximum control over the nano-particle motion.
Keywords: optical levitation, structured light, quantum sensing.