Towards a levitated-nanoparticle matter-wave diffractor

Abstract

In 1923, Louis de Broglie sparked the idea that all objects that move generate a wave, later called a matter wave. Since then, this type of wave behaviour has been observed for particles ranging from electrons to large molecules, but not for solid objects, such as a mesoscopic particle. In 1970, Arthur Ashkin showed the world that such a particle could be trapped using lasers. Levitating objects using light isolates them from the perturbations of the environment. This isolation allowed for the immobilization of atoms and particles, which in turn made possible the creation of new states of matter and the observation of quantum phenomena on mesoscopic objects. It is natural, then, to use an optically levitated particle and attempt to observe the matter waves it entrains when moving in vacuum. In this thesis, we try to understand how different forces influence the motion of the levitated particle, how the latter imparts information about itself to the surrounding light, and then use this insight to design an experiment that should make possible the observation of the result of the interaction between a particle’s matter waves, diffracted by an optical grating, and itself. We also describe an experiment aimed at measuring the density of vacuum

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Identifiers

ORCID for Hendrik Ulbricht: orcid.org/0000-0003-0356-0065

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