Levitated Nanophysics Group

We have two exciting PhD opportunities at the moment.

Firstly, we have our first project with the King’s Quantum mini-CDT in Applied Quantum Technologies, a project co-funded by industry to develop sensors from levitated nanoparticles. Apply Here to start in June 2025, but we recommend you contact James immediately if you are interested

Secondly, we’re looking for a student to work with levitated microparticles to understand and simulate microscopic phenomena. Apply Here to start in October 2025. The deadline is April 1st 2025, but we recommend you contact James earlier than this if you are interested.

New pre-print! Our long-awaited super-hot heat engine paper is live! Congratulations Molly & Jon, old friends Katie & Muddassar, and fantastic collaborators Federico & Janet.

We’re very excited to welcome Dr Qiongyuan Wu to our group, who will be working on our micro-thermodynamics experiments – our first ever theorist in the group.

Our team warmly welcome poet Chandrika Narayanan-Mohan, who is working with us as part of the Goethe Institut‘s Studio Quantum project, in collaboration with the Science Gallery London.

More information can be found in this interview.

Welcome Ronghao Yin, who joins us as a PhD student working on our mutliparticle levitation and neuromorphic imaging projects.

James presented the talk “Neuromorphic imaging of interacting particle arrays” in Denver at the Optical FiO 2024 conference. Learnt a lot about quantum computing. Learned that if you want to learn about quantum computing, don’t talk to people in the private sector.

A whole load of us (Joe, Sophie, James, Jon, Molly) went to the Quantum Engineering of Levitated Systems conference in Benasque, and James presented the talk “Neuromorphic imaging of interacting particle arrays”. Every evening, the other attendees would forlornly ask “where is KCL?” so they knew when the party would start.

As Chair or LeviNet, James co-organized the conference Optical Tweezers in vacuum with the Zhejiang Lab in Hangzhou China. Yugang and Zhenan from the group also attended. It was an amazing meeting, many new friendships made, lasting collaborations started. Also, it was insanely hot, we almost died taking this photo OMG.

Yugang has submitted exciting new work from the group: we use a neuromorphic imaging device (Event Based Camera) to track huge arrays of levitated particles, fast enough that we can feedback control three simultaneously.

We presented our exhibit The Unseen Wonders of Light to over 13,000 members of the public at the amazing Royal Society Summer Exhibition. We wanted to convey how surprising and useful light can be, showcasing beautiful optical rotation and (of course!) levitation. This project was led by Dr Margarita Khokhlova and Dr Emilio Pisanty.