Abstract
We study the fluctuation-induced dissipative dynamics of the quantized center of mass motion of a polarizable dielectric particle trapped near a surface. The particle's center of mass is treated as an open quantum system coupled to the electromagnetic field acting as its environment, with the resulting system dynamics described by a quantum Brownian motion master equation. The dissipation and decoherence of the particle's center of mass are characterized by the modified spectral density of the electromagnetic field that depends on surface losses and the strength of the classical trap field. Our results are relevant to experiments with levitated dielectric particles near surfaces, illustrating potential ways of mitigating fluctuation-induced decoherence while preparing such systems in macroscopic quantum states.
Highlights
Creating macroscopic superpositions of massive systems as a means to understand the quantum-to-classical transition is a task of foundational importance [1]
In this paper we study the decoherence and dissipation of the quantized center-of-mass (c.m.) motion of a neutral dielectric particle trapped near a surface
We show that the open system dynamics of the particle can be described in terms of the quantum Brownian motion (QBM) master equation [26,27,28], and the surface-modified dissipation and decoherence can be expressed in terms of a modified spectral density of the electromagnetic field
Summary
Creating macroscopic superpositions of massive systems as a means to understand the quantum-to-classical transition is a task of foundational importance [1]. There has been astonishing experimental progress in terms of the control and manipulation of levitated dielectric nanoparticles—ranging from recent demonstrations of cooling particles down to micro- and millidegrees Kelvin [7,8,9], to the observation of rotational frequencies as large as MHz-GHz with remarkable stabilities [10,11,12] Interfacing such precisely controlled mesoscopic quantum systems with waveguides further allows for better manipulation and probing mechanisms of the system of interest, as guided photonic modes can couple efficiently to particles in the near-field regime [13,14,15]. In this paper we study the decoherence and dissipation of the quantized center-of-mass (c.m.) motion of a neutral dielectric particle trapped near a surface. We study each of these contributions in detail in the following
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