Cooling and amplification of a vacuum-trapped nanoparticle

Jan Gieseler¹, Vijay Jain¹, Martin Frimmer¹, Loic Rondin¹, Romain Quidant², Christoph Dellago³, Lukas Novotny¹

1: Photonics Laboratory, ETH Zurich, Switzerland
2: ICFO, Castelldefels, Spain
3: Faculty of Physics, University of Vienna, Austria

We optically trap a single nanoparticle in high vacuum and cool its three spatial degrees of freedom by means of active parametric feedback. The small size and mass of the nanoparticle yield high resonance frequencies and high Q-factors along with low recoil heating, which are essential conditions for ground state cooling and for low decoherence. The vacuum-trapped nanoparticle forms an ideal model system for studying non-equilibrium processes, nonlinear interactions, and ultrasmall forces.