Aikawa lab

We are attending the worldwide network on levitated optomechanics LeviNet.

We are interested in nanoparticles levitated in vacuum. They have an advantage of being isolated from the environment and are expected to be useful for various applications such as accurate accelerometers and explorations on macroscopic quantum mechanics. The research area is now called levitated optomechanics.

Our lab is working on cooling the motion of levitated nanoparticles to ultralow temperatures and explorations with new physics enabled with ultracold nanoparticles. Recently, we developed a new approach for cooling the motion of nanoparticles in an optical lattice. For details, see this page. Furthermore, we developed a new cooling approach for neutral nanoparticles and demonstrated cooling to the ground state. For details, see this page. We are also interested in ion trapping of charged nanoparticles. For details, see this page.

Figure: Nanoparticles are trapped in an optical lattice produced with an infrared laser. For observing them, a green laser is irradiated.

1 December 2023
The paper on feedback cooling six degrees of freedom of a nearly spherical nanoparticle was published on Nature communications.

28 November 2023
Presented at the workshop Feedback in Quantum Machines 2023 (by Aikawa and by Kamba).

31 October 2023　
The paper on momentum measurements of ultracold neutral nanoparticles was published on Physical Review Letters.

7 September 2023　
Presented at the workshop Exploiting Levitated Particles in the Quantum Regime (by Kamba).

30 June 2023　
The paper on momentum measurements of ultracold neutral nanoparticles was submitted.

3 April 2023
D. Koja and R. Tanaka joined our group.

24 March 2023
Presented on JPS (by Kamba and Shimizu).

7 March 2023　
The paper on cooling all external degrees of freedom of a levitated near-sphere was submitted.

18 January 2023
Presented at the The 43rd Annual Meeting of The Laser Society of Japan (by Aikawa).

8 September 2022
Presented on the LeviNet conference (by Aikawa).

8 July 2022
The paper on cooling neutral nanoparticles in an optical lattice was published.

1 June 2022
M. Kamba was awarded as Tokyo Tech Advanced Human Resource Development Fellowship for Doctoral Students.

3 May 2022
The paper on cooling neutral nanoparticles in an optical lattice was submitted.