Levitated Optomechanics with Meta-Atoms

Abstract

We propose to introduce additional control in levitated optomechanics by trapping a meta-atom, i.e. a subwavelength and high-permittivity dielectric particle supporting Mie resonances. In particular, we theoretically demonstrate that optical levitation and center-of-mass ground-state cooling of silicon nanoparticles in vacuum is not only experimentally feasible but it offers enhanced performance over widely used silica particles, in terms of both trap frequency and trap depth. Moreover, we show that, by adjusting the detuning of the trapping laser with respect to the particle's resonance, the sign of the polarizability becomes negative, enabling levitation in the minimum of laser intensity e.g. at the nodes of a standing wave. The latter opens the door to trapping nanoparticles in the optical near-field combining red and blue-detuned frequencies, in analogy to two-level atoms, which is of interest for generating strong coupling to photonic nanostructures and short-distance force sensing.

12pages, 9 figures

References in corpus (8)

• Backward Pulling Force from a Forward Propagating Beam
• Motional Quantum Ground State of a Levitated Nanoparticle from Room Temperature
• High Quality factor photonic crystal nanobeam cavities
• Simultaneous ground-state cooling of two mechanical modes of a levitated nanoparticle
• Observation of strong and tunable light-induced dipole-dipole interactions between optically levitated nanoparticles
• Acceleration sensing with magnetically levitated oscillators above a superconductor
• 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

Cited by in corpus (7)

• Quantum theory of light interaction with a Lorenz-Mie particle: Optical detection and three-dimensional ground-state cooling
• Vacuum levitation and motion control on chip
• Trapping microparticles in a structured dark focus
• Switchable optical trapping of Mie-resonant phase-change nanoparticles
• Radiation forces and torques in optics and acoustics
• Decoherence of dielectric particles by thermal emission
• Optical Supertorque Induced by Mie-Resonant Modes