Abstract
Levitated diamond nanocrystals with nitrogen-vacancy (NV) centres in high vacuum have been proposed as a unique system for experiments in fundamental quantum mechanics, including the generation of large quantum superposition states and tests of quantum gravity. This system promises extreme isolation from its environment while providing quantum control and sensing through the NV centre spin. While optical trapping has been the most explored method of levitation, recent results indicate that excessive optical heating of the nanodiamonds under vacuum may make the method impractical with currently available materials. Here, we study an alternative magneto-gravitational trap for diamagnetic particles, such as diamond nanocrystals, with stable levitation from atmospheric pressure to high vacuum. Magnetic field gradients from permanent magnets confine the particle in two dimensions, while confinement in the third dimension is gravitational. We demonstrate that feedback cooling of the centre-of-mass motion of a trapped nanodiamond cluster results in cooling of one degree of freedom to less than 1 K.
Highlights
Extreme isolation from the surrounding environment makes optically trapped particles in vacuum an attractive system in which to study fundamental quantum mechanics[1,2,3]
After complete evaporation of the dibutyl sebacate (DBS), the diamond nanocrystal would be left in the trap under high vacuum
We have demonstrated that clusters of diamond nanocrystals can be trapped in high vacuum in a magneto-gravitational trap
Summary
Gravitational Trap in High Vacuum received: 07 April 2016 accepted: 27 June 2016 Published: 22 July 2016. Levitated diamond nanocrystals with nitrogen-vacancy (NV) centres in high vacuum have been proposed as a unique system for experiments in fundamental quantum mechanics, including the generation of large quantum superposition states and tests of quantum gravity. This system promises extreme isolation from its environment while providing quantum control and sensing through the NV centre spin. A diamond nanocrystal with NV centres levitated in an optical trap has been proposed as a platform for experiments including generating macroscopic superposition (Schrödinger’s cat) states[7,8,9,10,11] and tests of quantum gravity[12,13]. The motion of a particle when equilibrated at ambient temperature in the trap can be observed and recorded with a high-speed camera
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