Chip-based magnetic levitation of superconducting microparticles for macroscopic quantum experiments

Magnetic levitation has been proposed as a platform to greatly decouple the center-of-mass motion of a levitated mechanical resonator from its environment. As a result, this platform will enable novel, ultra-sensitive force and acceleration sensors, as well as quantum experiments with macroscopic objects of 10^13 atomic mass units. In our work, we demonstrate chip-based magnetic levitation of superconducting microparticles. Our integrated magnetic trap consists of a two-chip stack, with microfabricated niobium superconducting coils generating the magnetic trapping field. We trap near-spherical lead microparticles, which are fabricated in-house. We observe the motion of the levitated microparticle optically and via SQUID-based read-out at temperatures of 4K and 40mK. In the future, we aim to couple the levitated particle to superconducting circuits, in order to perform quantum control of its center-of-mass motion.