You can find a free video & audio recording of my Optomechanics tutorial lecture from SPIE Optics + Photonics 2017, by clicking on the image below:
You can site it in the following way:
James Millen, “Tutorial on optomechanics (Conference Presentation)”, Proc. SPIE 10347, Optical Trapping and Optical Micromanipulation XIV, 103471E (25 September 2017);
doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1117/12.2272974
It only took 308 days, but we just had some new research published in Nature Communications.
It was a completely surprising piece of work; we were able to levitate a tiny silicon cylinder, and make it tick like the hands of the worlds most perfect clock. No physical man-made object has ever rotated in such a perfect way. Our nano-watch only lost one millionth of a second over four days.
This is useful, because we can detect even the tiniest changes to the motion of our little watch-hands, meaning we can shove it places and detect all kinds of interesting, hard to measure things.
You can read Optically driven ultra-stable nanomechanical Rotor here.
I was fortunate enough to be invited to give not one, but two lectures at this exciting, interdisciplinary meeting. I discussed working with nanoparticles in high vacuum, and also presented The Quantum Workshop, which the organisers had kindly shipped all the way from Vienna to Lisbon!
I wrote a short Viewpoint article for Physical Review X, giving an overview of some very exciting work in the field of nanothermodynamics, where researchers have surpassed the Carnot limit of efficiency.
I am extremely honoured to have received the Institute of Physics’ Bates Prize. You can read the citation here. It is a particular pleasure to belong to a list including my Master’s project supervisor (Mike Tarbutt), my Ph. D. supervisor (Matt Jones), and my close collaborator (Janet Anders).
I gave a lecture to celebrate, at this year’s QuAMP in Glasgow. It didn’t stop raining for one entire week, impressive Scotland! It was great to reconnect with the UK quantum physics community.
I have thoroughly enjoyed attending the Optical Trapping and Optical Micromanipulation meeting at SPIE Optics and Photonics 2017 in San Diego. I delivered a tutorial lecture on Optomechanics and chaired a session on levitated optomechanics.
You can find my tutorial lecture here.
I had an great day hosted by Klemens Hammerer, giving a talk on our research and visiting various labs. I particularly enjoyed seeing a rocket which launched cold atoms into space, and the 10m LIGO prototype.
