Related papers: Loading an Optical Trap with Diamond Nanocrystals …
Nanoparticles levitated by optical fields under vacuum conditions have applications in quantum science, the study of nanothermodynamics and precision sensing. Existing techniques for loading optical traps require ambient conditions, and…
Since the early work by Ashkin in 1970, optical trapping has become one of the most powerful tools for manipulating small particles, such as micron sized beads or single atoms. The optical trapping mechanism is based on the interaction…
Optically levitated nanodiamonds with nitrogen-vacancy centers promise a high-quality hybrid spin-optomechanical system. However, the trapped nanodiamond absorbs energy form laser beams and causes thermal damage in vacuum. We propose to…
Levitated nanodiamonds containing nitrogen vacancy centres in high vacuum are a potential test bed for numerous phenomena in fundamental physics. However, experiments so far have been limited to low vacuum due to heating arising from…
Controlling the transport, trapping, and filtering of nanoparticles is important for many applications. By virtue of their weak response to gravity and their thermal motion, various physical mechanisms can be exploited for such operations…
We describe the design, construction, and operation of an apparatus utilizing a piezoelectric transducer for in-vacuum loading of nanoparticles into an optical trap for use in levitated optomechanics experiments. In contrast to commonly…
The nitrogen-vacancy (NV) centre in diamond is emerging as a promising platform for solid-state quantum information processing and nanoscale metrology. Of interest in these applications is the manipulation of the NV charge, which can be…
Radiation pressure forces in a focussed laser beam can be used to trap microscopic absorbing particles against a substrate. Calculations based on momentum transfer considerations show that stable trapping occurs before the beam waist, and…
Deterministic optical manipulation of fluorescent nanodiamonds (FNDs) in fluids has emerged as an experimental challenge in multimodal biological imaging. Designing and developing nano-optical trapping strategies to serve this purpose is an…
We present the first evidence of nitrogen vacancy (NV) photoluminescence from a nanodiamond suspended in a free-space optical dipole trap at atmospheric pressure. The photoluminescence rates are shown to decrease with increasing trap laser…
Optical dipole-traps are used in various scientific fields, including classical optics, quantum optics and biophysics. Here, we propose and implement a dipole-trap for nanoparticles that is based on focusing from the full solid angle with a…
Optical trapping has proven to be a valuable experimental technique for precisely controlling small dielectric objects. However, due to their very nature, conventional optical traps are diffraction limited and require high intensities to…
While conventional optical trapping techniques can trap objects with submicron dimensions, the underlying limits imposed by the diffraction of light generally restrict their use to larger or higher refractive index particles. As the index…
Mechanical oscillators based on levitated particles are promising candidates for sensitive detectors and platforms for testing fundamental physics. The targeted quality factors for such oscillators correspond to extremely low damping rates…
The manipulation of microparticles using optical forces has led to many applications in the life and physical sciences. To extend optical trapping towards the nano-regime, in this work we demonstrate trapping of single nanoparticles in…
Nitrogen vacancy (NV) centers in diamond are promising elemental blocks for quantum optics [1, 2], spin-based quantum information processing [3, 4], and high-resolution sensing [5-13]. Yet, fully exploiting these capabilities of single NV…
Levitated diamond nanocrystals with nitrogen-vacancy (NV) centres in high vacuum have been proposed as a unique system for experiments in fundamental quantum mechanics, including the generation of large quantum superposition states and…
In this article we explore the requirements for enabling high quality optically detected magnetic resonance (ODMR) spectroscopy in a conventional gradient force optical tweezers using nanodiamonds containing nitrogen-vacancy (NV$^{-}$)…
In this paper, we introduce a horizontally-oriented, photophoretic `boat' trap that is capable of capturing and self-loading large (radius ${\ge}1$ $\mu$m) solid gold particles in air for more than one hour. Once trapped, particles are held…
We demonstrate a compact piezoelectric-driven micropipette launcher for localized in-vacuum delivery of nano- and microparticles into optical traps. The launcher has been integrated into multiple optical trapping setups, including a…