Levitated Nanophysics Group

The whole levitated Nanophysics team got together for what has become our traditional (?) Mexican (??) Christmas Lunch. Well done for getting through a tough year, team!

James attending the ever-inspiring Quantum Technologies Showcase to see what progress is being made in the UK towards the realisation of really useful quantum things!

James gave a talk at SPIE Photonex 2021. An actual talk, with real people! The topic was building MEMS devices with levitated particles.

Read all about our technique to quickly, cleanly and efficiently launching nanoparticles into optical traps. Congratulations Maryam, Yanhui & James!

Direct and clean loading of nanoparticles into optical traps at millibar pressures
arXiv:2109.10316

The group (particularly James & Muddassar) are excited to have received support from EPSRC to develop our electrically levitated particle sensors. We will build simple, robust systems for particle levitation.

We had a lot of fun running a 2-day Red Pitaya Hackathon, and achieved way more than we hoped for! Well done team!

Welcome to Nur & Sara, who will join our group for a couple of months as Summer Students.

Nur, who holds a King’s Undergraduate Research Fellowship, will build an interactive electrical trap in collaboration with the artist Steven Claydon, and Sara will work with the optomechanics team on nanoparticle cooling software.

James organized a public engagement event associated with the UNESCO International Day of Light and the London Institute of Advanced Light Technologies (London Light). The public were invited to share short videos on the theme of light, you can see all of the entries at the London Light Instagram page.

This was followed by a panel discussion, The Shared Language of Light, featuring professionals from science, art, architecture and design. Check it out here:

James organized Lighting Up 2021, an 24 hour artwork formed by the shifting light across 6 continents, in celebration of the UNESCO International Day of Light 2021. A short version is shown below, but if you want the full 24 hours (!) you can see here, here, here and here!

We’re ready to combine optical tweezers with an optical cavity, to do some serious cooling of levitated nanoparticles, good work James S!