Interaction Between an Optically Levitated Nanoparticle and Its Thermal Image: Internal Thermometry via Displacement Sensing

Abstract

We propose and theoretically analyze an experiment where displacement sensing of an optically levitated nanoparticle in front of a surface can be used to measure the induced dipole-dipole interaction between the nanoparticle and its thermal image. This is achieved by using a surface that is transparent to the trapping light but reflective to infrared radiation, with a reflectivity that can be time modulated. This dipole-dipole interaction relies on the thermal radiation emitted by a silica nanoparticle having sufficient temporal coherence to correlate the reflected radiation with the thermal fluctuations of the dipole. The resulting force is orders of magnitude stronger than the thermal gradient force and it strongly depends on the internal temperature of the nanoparticle for a particle-to-surface distance greater than two micrometers. We argue that it is experimentally feasible to use displacement sensing of a levitated nanoparticle in front of a surface as an internal thermometer. Experimental access to the internal physics of a levitated nanoparticle in vacuum is crucial to understand the limitations that decoherence poses to current efforts devoted to prepare a nanoparticle in a macroscopic quantum superposition state.

6+11 pages, 3+4 figures. Accepted for publication in Physical Review Letters

References in corpus (16)

• Motional Quantum Ground State of a Levitated Nanoparticle from Room Temperature
• Millikelvin cooling of an optically trapped microsphere in vacuum
• Large Quantum Superpositions and Interference of Massive Nanometer-Sized Objects
• Measurement of the Temperature Dependence of the Casimir-Polder Force
• Decoherence of matter waves by thermal emission of radiation
• New asymptotic behaviour of the surface-atom force out of thermal equilibrium
• Search for Millicharged Particles Using Optically Levitated Microspheres
• Casimir-Lifshitz force out of thermal equilibrium
• Observation of strong and tunable light-induced dipole-dipole interactions between optically levitated nanoparticles
• Controlling the net charge on a nanoparticle optically levitated in vacuum
• Theory of decoherence in a matter wave Talbot-Lau interferometer
• Casimir-Lifshitz force out of thermal equilibrium and asymptotic non-additivity
• Theory for Cavity Cooling of Levitated Nanoparticles via Coherent Scattering: Master Equation Approach
• Optical cold damping of neutral nanoparticles near the ground state in an optical lattice
• Nanoparticle detection in an open-access silicon microcavity
• On-chip optical levitation with a metalens in vacuum

Cited by in corpus (6)

• Macroscopic Quantum Superpositions via Dynamics in a Wide Double-Well Potential
• Near-field GHz rotation and sensing with an optically levitated nanodumbbell
• Wigner Analysis of Particle Dynamics and Decoherence in Wide Nonharmonic Potentials
• Fluctuation-induced Forces on Nanospheres in External Fields
• Decoherence of dielectric particles by thermal emission
• Backaction suppression in levitated optomechanics using reflective boundaries