Periodic Reporting for period 4 - QLev4G (Quantum control of levitated massive mechanical systems: a new approach for gravitational quantum physics)
Reporting period: 2019-12-01 to 2020-05-31
The project is built on the enormous recent success in quantum control of the motion of solid-state mechanical resonators, which has emerged over the last decade as a new branch of interdisciplinary research in quantum and solid-state physics. In conclusion, QLev4G has successfully transferred this methodology to optically and magnetically levitated systems to achieve (i) exceptional sensitivity to weak gravitational forces, hence enabling measurements of gravity between sub-millimeter objects; (ii) unprecedented levels of decoupling from the environment, thereby opening up a new route for long-lived quantum coherence of genuinely massive systems.
Most prominently, with respect to quantum physics QLev4G has realized for the first time the motional quantum ground state of an isolated, massive solid-state object containing hundreds of millions of atoms in a room temperature environment. With respect to gravitational physics, QLev4G has measured the gravitational field of a 1mm sized solid-state object, by far the smallest gravitational source mass in experiments to measure gravity.