We report an experimental observation of a record-breaking ultrahigh rotation frequency about 6 GHz in an optically levitated nanoparticle system. We optically trap a nanoparticle in the gravity direction with a high numerical aperture (NA) objective lens, which shows significant advantages in compensating the influences of the scattering force and the photophoretic force on the trap, especially at intermediate pressure (about 100 Pa). This allows us to trap a nanoparticle from atmospheric to low pressure (
10
−
3
Pa
) without using feedback cooling. We measure a highest rotation frequency about 4.3 GHz of the trapped nanoparticle without feedback cooling and a 6 GHz rotation with feedback cooling, which is the fastest mechanical rotation ever reported to date. Our work provides useful guides for efficiently observing hyperfast rotation in the optical levitation system and may find various applications such as in ultra-sensitive torque detection, probing vacuum friction, and testing unconventional decoherence theories.
We experimentally observe the dipole scattering of a nanoparticle using a high numerical aperture (NA) imaging system. The optically levitated nanoparticle provides an environment free of a particle–substrate interaction. We illuminate the silica nanoparticle in vacuum with a 532 nm laser beam orthogonally to the propagation direction of the 1064 nm trapping laser beam strongly focused by the same high NA objective used to collect the scattering, which results in a dark background and high signal-noise ratio. The dipole orientations of the nanoparticle induced by the linear polarization of the incident laser are studied by measuring the scattering light distribution in the image and the Fourier space (k-space) as we rotate the illuminating light polarization. The polarization vortex (vector beam) is observed for the special case, when the dipole orientation of the nanoparticle is aligned along the optical axis of the microscope objective. Our work offers an important platform for studying the scattering anisotropy with Kerker conditions.
We experimentally study optical homodyne and heterodyne detections with the same setup, which is flexible to manipulate the signal sideband modulation. When the modulation only generates a single signal sideband, the light field measurement by mixing the single sideband at ω 0 ± Ω with a strong local oscillator at the carrier frequency ω 0 on a beam splitter becomes balanced heterodyne detection. When two signal sidebands at ω 0 ± Ω are generated and the relative phase of the two sidebands is locked, this measurement corresponds to optical balanced homodyne detection. With this setup, we may confirm directly that the signal-to-noise ratio with heterodyne detection is two-fold worse than that with homodyne detection. This work will have important applications in quantum state measurement and quantum information. homodyne detection, heterodyne detection, sideband modulation, the signal-to-noise ratio PACS number(s): 01.50.Pa, 03.65.Ta, 42.50.Lc Citation: Li W, Yu X D, Meng Z M, et al. Experimental study of balanced optical homodyne and heterodyne detection by controlling sideband modulation. Sci
We experimentally study the interference of dipole scattered light from two optically levitated nanoparticles in vacuum, which present an environment free of particle-substrate interactions. We illuminate the two trapped nanoparticles with a linearly polarized probe beam orthogonal to the propagation of the trapping laser beams. The scattered light from the nanoparticles are collected by a high numerical aperture (NA) objective lens and imaged. The interference fringes from the scattered vector light for the different dipole orientations in image and Fourier space are observed. Especially, the interference fringes of two scattered light fields with polarization vortex show the π shift of the interference fringes between inside and outside the center region of the two nanoparticles in the image space. As far as we know, this is the first experimental observation of the interference of scattered vector light fields from two dipoles in free space. This work also provides a simple and direct method to determine the spatial scales between optically levitated nanoparticles by the interference fringes.
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