Levitated Nanophysics Group

A preprint of an overview of the field of Quantum Thermodynamics has appeared online here now. It’s a good summary for physicists!

Our work on using Whispering Gallery Modes to cool the centre-of-mass motion of “large” objects is up on arxiv here. We are able to cool objects tens-of-microns in size, and microgramms in mass, using light!

I visited Aurelian Dantan in the Ion Trapping group at the University of Aarhus in Denmark, and gave a talk. I am particularly interested in their work on sympathetically cooling heavy ions, ions in optical cavities, as well as their new research on optomechanics.

Our paper “Quantum cooling and squeezing of a levitating nanosphere via time-continuous measurements” has been published in New Journal of Physics. In this work we describe how nanospheres in an optical cavity can be further cooled via feedback, and how their quantum state can be manipulated.

I was invited to talk at Innsbruck for an SFB FoQuS meeting on the 10th July. It was my first trip to Innsbruck, a town seemingly besieged by mountains!

I have been invited to give my Quantum Theory lectures at the Royal Institution for the third year in a row!