Experimental Realisation of a Thermal Squeezed State of Levitated Optomechanics

Abstract

We experimentally squeeze the thermal motional state of an optically levitated nanosphere, by fast switching between two trapping frequencies. The measured phase space distribution of our particle shows the typical shape of a squeezed thermal state, from which we infer up to 2.7dB of squeezing along one motional direction. The experiment features a large number of thermal excitations, therefore remaining in the classical regime. Nevertheless, we argue that the manipulation scheme described here could be used to achieve squeezing below the zero-point level, if preceded by ground state cooling of the levitated mechanical oscillator. Additionally, a higher degree of squeezing could in principle be achieved by repeating the frequency-switching protocol multiple times.

6 pages, 3 figures, updated version, Accepted for publication at PRL

References in corpus (4)

• Dynamic Relaxation of a Levitated Nanoparticle from a Non-Equilibrium Steady State
• Quantifying decoherence in continuous variable systems
• Enhancing Quantum Effects via Periodic Modulations in Optomechanical Systems
• Nanomechanical squeezing with detection via a microwave cavity

Cited by in corpus (5)

• Gravitational Decoherence
• Auxiliary-cavity-assisted ground-state cooling of optically levitated nanosphere in the unresolved-sideband regime
• Single and two-mode mechanical squeezing of an optically levitated nanodiamond via dressed-state coherence
• Spectral analysis and parameter estimation in levitated optomechanics
• Single Particle Thermodynamics with Levitated Nanoparticles