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Lens-Free Optical Detection of Thermal Motion of a Submillimeter Sphere Diamagnetically Levitated in High Vacuum

Fang Xiong1,§, Peiran Yin1,§, Tong Wu1, Han Xie1, Rui Li2,3,4, Yingchun Leng1, Yanan Li1, Changkui Duan2,3,4, Xi Kong1,* et al.

Pu Huang1,† and Jiangfeng Du2,3,4,‡

  • 1National Laboratory of Solid State Microstructures and Department of Physics, Nanjing University, Nanjing 210093, China
  • 2CAS Key Laboratory of Microscale Magnetic Resonance and Department of Modern Physics, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei 230026, China
  • 3Synergetic Innovation Center of Quantum Information and Quantum Physics, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei 230026, China
  • 4Hefei National Laboratory for Physical Sciences at the Microscale, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei 230026, China

  • *kongxi@nju.edu.cn
  • †hp@nju.edu.cn
  • ‡djf@ustc.edu.cn
  • §These authors contributed equally to this paper.
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Phys. Rev. Applied 16, L011003 – Published 13 July, 2021

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevApplied.16.L011003

Abstract

Levitated oscillators of millimeter or submillimeter size are particularly attractive due to their potential role in studying various fundamental problems and practical applications. One of the crucial issues towards these goals is to achieve efficient measurements of oscillator motion, although this remains a challenge. Here we theoretically propose a lens-free optical detection scheme, which can be used to detect the motion of a millimeter or submillimeter levitated oscillator with a measurement efficiency close to the standard quantum limit with a modest optical power. We demonstrate experimentally this scheme on a 0.5-mm-diameter microsphere that is diamagnetically levitated under high vacuum and room temperature, and the thermal motion is detected with high precision. Based on this system, an estimated acceleration sensitivity of 9.7×10−10g/Hz is achieved, which is an improvement of more than 1 order of magnitude over the best value reported for a levitated mechanical system. Due to the stability of the system, the minimum resolved acceleration of 3.5×10−12g is reached with measurement times of 105 s. This result is expected to have potential applications in the study of exotic interactions in the millimeter or submillimeter range and the realization of compact gravimeters and accelerometers.

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Phys. Rev. Applied 16, L011003– Published 13 July, 2021
  • Received 9 February 2021
  • Revised 7 April 2021
  • Accepted 27 May 2021
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