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arXiv:2504.17944 · Science

Quantum squeezing of a levitated nanomechanical oscillator

Mitsuyoshi Kamba, Naoki Hara, K. Aikawa

Published Sep 18, 2025• 19 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

Manipulating the motion of macroscopic objects near their quantum mechanical uncertainties has been desired in diverse fields, including fundamental physics, sensing, and transducers. Despite progress in ground-state cooling of a levitated solid particle, realizing its nonclassical states has been elusive. Here, we demonstrate quantum squeezing of the motion of a single nanoparticle by rapidly varying its oscillation frequency. We reveal appreciable narrowing of the velocity variance to -4.9 ± 0.1 decibels of that of the ground state using free-expansion measurements. Our work shows that a levitated nanoparticle offers an ideal platform for studying nonclassical states of its motion and provides a route to developing applications in quantum sensing and exploring quantum mechanics at a macroscopic scale.

DOI
10.1126/science.ady4652

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Manipulating the motion of macroscopic objects near their quantum mechanical uncertainties has been desired in diverse fields, including fundamental physics, sensing, and transducers. Despite progress in ground-state cooling of a levitated solid particle, realizing its nonclassical states has been elusive. Here, we demonstrate quantum squeezing of the motion of a single nanoparticle by rapidly varying its oscillation frequency. We reveal appreciable narrowing of the velocity variance to -4.9 ± 0.1 decibels of that of the ground state using free-expansion measurements. Our work shows that a levitated nanoparticle offers an ideal platform for studying nonclassical states of its motion and provides a route to developing applications in quantum sensing and exploring quantum mechanics at a macroscopic scale.
Nonclassical states of nano- and micro-mechanical motion enable measurements beyond the standard quantum limit and constitute a key resource for quantum sensing and metrology. The most strongly squeezed mechanical states to date have been generated with electromechanical platforms under cryogenic refrigeration and using reservoir engineering. To push mechanical systems deeper into the quantum-squeezed regime requires protocols that increase the rate at which squeezing is generated to more strongly overcome the decoherence rate at which state purity is lost. Here, we squeeze the 800 kHz libration mode of a silica nanoparticle optically levitated in vacuum at room temperature. We expose our mechanical oscillator to an optically generated inverted potential, where the squeezing operation proceeds at an exponentially accelerated rate. We reach a squeezed quadrature variance 11 dB below the vacuum fluctuations within 250 ns. Our protocol establishes a new paradigm for generating quantum squeezing of mechanical motion and offers a platform for quantum-enhanced sensing with massive oscillators.
Sensing weak forces through observing a mechanical motion near or below its quantum zero-point fluctuation has been desired in diverse areas. While mechanical oscillators have played a crucial role in such studies, their application to free-fall-type sensing has been elusive, in particular in the quantum regime. Here, we demonstrate sensing a static force of the order of 10 zeptonewtons with a levitated nanomechanical oscillator below the zero-point fluctuation through the rapid modulation of its confining potential. We prepare a squeezed state with a reduced velocity uncertainty by abruptly decreasing the potential. Subsequently, we detect the exerted static force through time-of-flight measurements, where we release the nanoparticle from the potential and measure the displacement during a free fall. Furthermore, time-of-flight measurements allow us to perform quantum state tomography of the squeezed state, from which we reconstruct its Wigner quasiprobability distribution and evaluate the Fisher information for the position measurement to quantify the achievable force sensitivity of our protocol. Our results demonstrate that modulating the trap stiffness serves as a crucial technique for quantum-limited force sensing and paves the way to utilize a levitated nanoparticle as a promising sensing platform beyond the quantum limit with a capability of quantum state tomography.
Every massive particle behaves like a wave, according to quantum physics. Yet, this characteristic wave nature has only been observed in double-slit experiments with microscopic systems, such as atoms and molecules. The key aspect is that the wavefunction describing the motion of these systems extends coherently over a distance comparable to the slit separation, much larger than the size of the system itself. Preparing these states of more massive and complex objects remains an outstanding challenge. While the motion of solid-state oscillators can now be controlled at the level of single quanta, their coherence length remains comparable to the zero-point motion, limited to subatomic distances. Here, we prepare a delocalized state of a levitating solid-state nanosphere with coherence length exceeding the zero-point motion. We first cool its motion to the ground state. Then, by modulating the stiffness of the confinement potential, we achieve more than a threefold increment of the initial coherence length with minimal added noise. Optical levitation gives us the necessary control over the confinement that other mechanical platforms lack. Our work is a stepping stone towards the generation of delocalization scales comparable to the object size, a crucial regime for macroscopic quantum experiments, and towards quantum-enhanced force sensing with levitated particles.
Levitated nanoparticles are a forerunner as an experimental platform to test the limits of quantum mechanics at a macroscopic scale. Some important initial steps have been made towards preparing a macroscopic quantum state of a relatively massive (femtogram) particle. Specifically, the community has achieved ground-state cooling of the center-of-mass motion of a nanoparticle levitated in an optical trap. One crucial further step is now to expand the wavefunction of the particle. This step should happen in the presence of a minimum of decoherence, which makes evolution in an optical trap (inevitably exerting measurement backaction) unsuitable.
Abstract Every massive particle behaves like a wave, according to quantum physics. Yet, this characteristic wave nature has only been observed in double-slit experiments with microscopic systems, such as atoms and molecules [1, 2]. The key aspect is that the wavefunction describing the motion of these systems extends coherently over a distance comparable to the slit separation, much larger than the size of the system itself [3]. Preparing these states of more massive and complex objects remains an outstanding challenge. While the motion of solid-state oscillators can now be controlled at the level of single quanta, their coherence length remains comparable to the zero-point motion, limited to subatomic distances [4–7]. Here, we prepare a delocalized state of a levitating solid-state nanosphere with coherence length exceeding the zero-point motion. We first cool its motion to the ground state. Then, by modulating the stiffness of the confinement potential, we achieve more than a threefold increment of the initial coherence length with minimal added noise. Optical levitation gives us the necessary control over the confinement that other mechanical platforms lack. Our work is a stepping stone towards the generation of delocalization scales comparable to the object size, a crucial regime for macroscopic quantum experiments [8], and towards quantum-enhanced force sensing with levitated particles [9].
Abstract Squeezing is a crucial resource for quantum information processing and quantum sensing. In levitated nanomechanics, squeezed states of motion can be generated via temporal control of the trapping frequency of a massive particle. However, the amount of achievable squeezing typically suffers from detrimental environmental effects. We propose a scheme for the generation of significant levels of mechanical squeezing in the motional state of a levitated nanoparticle by leveraging on the careful temporal control of the trapping potential. We analyse the performance of such a scheme by fully accounting for the most relevant sources of noise, including measurement backaction. The feasibility of our proposal, which is close to experimental state-of-the-art, makes it a valuable tool for quantum state engineering.