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  • Open Access

Optical squeezing mediated by levitated oscillators at their quantum ground state

A. Pontin1,*, Q. Deplano2,3, F. Marino1,3, and F. Marin1,2,3,4,†

  • *Contact author: antonio.pontin@cnr.it
  • †Contact author: francesco.marin@unifi.it
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Phys. Rev. A 114, 053704 – Published 4 November, 2026

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/hms3-yb2h

Abstract

We demonstrate optical squeezing below the shot-noise level generated through the interaction of an optical cavity field with two center-of-mass modes of a levitated nanoparticle, simultaneously cooled to occupation numbers well below unity. By analyzing the quadrature fluctuations of the cavity output through heterodyne detection, we resolve the full spectral covariance matrix of the optical field and map regions of sub-shot-noise squeezing as a function of detection phase and frequency. Operating in the resolved sideband and strong-coupling regime where mechanical modes hybridize with the optical mode, we observe consistent squeezing in the band 70–95 kHz with a lowest variance of 0.98 (2% below vacuum fluctuations). We thus demonstrate optical squeezing mediated by multiple mechanical oscillators in their quantum ground state, bridging mechanical quantum control with nonclassical light and establishing levitated optomechanics as a platform for multimode quantum interactions.

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Phys. Rev. A 114, 053704– Published 4 November, 2026
  • Received 29 April 2026
  • Accepted 13 October 2026
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Published by the American Physical Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the published article's title, journal citation, and DOI.

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