Erwin Schrödinger Center for Quantum Science & Technology (ESQ)

In recent years, the field of levitated optomechanics has grown at a very fast pace. With the achievement of cooling nanospheres to the quantum ground state, ideas like multi-particle entanglement, the observation of rotational quantum revivals and the controlled generation of non-Gaussian quantum states are one step closer to realization, enabling us to further probe our understanding of the foundation of physics.

All these experiments require launching and trapping individualized and size-selected nanoparticles. Several launching techniques have been established in the scientific community so far, but none of them deterministically launches single particles with velocities slow enough to be optically trapped at a high repetition rate while being compatible with high vacuum.

This research project’s objective is to evaluate embedding nanoparticles in a solid matrix which gets vaporized in situ to fulfil these conditions.

The ESQ Discovery Programme gave me the opportunity to move that idea from paper to action.