Levitated Nanophysics Group

We have started building our first optical cavity in the Levitated Nanophysics lab. This will be used to cool the motion of silicon nanorods to the quantum level. Exciting stuff!

We are super excited to get our hands on these beautiful micro-ion traps. They have been created by the Sinclair group at NPL, who have entered into collaboration with us to produce miniaturised nanoparticle trapping technologies.

We were visited by our long-term collaborator Prof. Janet Anders from the University of Exeter, to discuss non-white noise and extreme heat engines. We are excited to see what nanothermodynamics we can study in our Levitated Electromechanics experiment.

We had our official lab opening today! This marks the opening of a new clean room, a quantum science lab and an attosecond physics lab at King’s. It’s exciting to be part of a growing physics department here in London.

James looking sheepish in front of the acting Principal.

We had cake!

We’re excited to welcome Yugang Ren and James Sabin as Ph.D. students in our group. Yugang will be working on levitated electromechanics, James will be working on cavity optomechanics.

James was invited to join the Generation |Y⟩ initiative, of millennial quantum scientists starting their own research groups. It was an incredible meeting, with a huge amount of knowledge sharing and support.

Well done Yanhui & Maryam, first nanorods trapped in London! These silicon nanorods are 600nm lond and about 130nm in diameter.

The blue data shows the spectrum of a nanorod trapped by linearly polarized light, and the red data a spinning nanorod illuminated with circularly polarized light.

You can find a pre-print of our levitated optomechanics article on arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/1907.08198

Optomechanics with Levitated Particles – Millen, Monteiro, Pettit, Vamivakas

We are very pleased to have Inca Robinson join us as a King’s Undergraduate Research Fellow. She will spend the next 6 weeks studying the concept of “macroscopic” in quantum physics.

Levitation in our electromechanics experiment! Seriously speedy work from Katie and Muddassar.