Towards Stationary Optomechanical Entanglement of a Levitated Nanosphere Inside an Optical Cavity

The rapid development of quantum optomechanics has seen the creation of many new experimental platforms which are uniquely tailored to study fundamental questions [1] and act as quantum sensors [2]. Within this field, levitated systems provide a compelling architecture due to their flexibility and isolation from their environment. Recently, we cooled an optically levitated massive object to its quantum ground state [3], a task which was made possible by a new technique called cavity cooling by coherent scattering. We endeavor to build upon this work by generating stationary optomechanical entanglement using this same coupling mechanism. In this talk, I will present our recent work towards demonstrating such entanglement using a silica nanoparticle inside of an optical cavity. The experimental realization of the procedure outlined in [4] for inferring entanglement between the light and mechanics will be detailed and the next steps will discussed.

[1] Y. Chu, et al., Nature 563, 666-670(2018).
[2] C. Marletto and V. Vedral, Phys. Rev. Lett. 119, 240402 (2017).
[3] U. Delic, et al., Science 30, 892-895 (2020).
[4] C. Gut, et al., Phys. Rev. Research 2, 033244 (2020).