State Expansion of a Levitated Nanoparticle in a Dark Harmonic Potential
E. Bonvin, Louisiane Devaud, Massimiliano Rossi, Andrei Militaru, Lorenzo Dania, Dmitry S. Bykov, Oriol Romero‐Isart, Tracy E. Northup, Lukáš Novotný, Martin Frimmer
Abstract
We spatially expand and subsequently contract the motional thermal state of a levitated nanoparticle using a hybrid trapping scheme. The particle's center-of-mass motion is initialized in a thermal state (temperature 155 mK) in an optical trap and then expanded by subsequent evolution in a much softer Paul trap in the absence of optical fields. We demonstrate expansion of the motional state's standard deviation in position by a factor of 24. In our system, state expansion occurs devoid of backaction from photon recoil, making this approach suitable for coherent wave function expansion.