Chip-based magnetic levitation of superconducting microparticles for macroscopic quantum experiments
ORAL
Abstract
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.
*We acknowledge funding from the Knut and Alice Wallenberg foundation through a Wallenberg Academy fellowship (W.W.) and the Wallenberg Center for Quantum Technology (WACQT, A.P.). G.H. acknowledges support from the Swedish Research Council (grant no. 2020-00381). Sample fabrication was performed in the Myfab Nanofabrication Laboratory at Chalmers. Simulations were performed on resources provided by the Swedish National Infrastructure for Computing (SNIC) at Tetralith, Linköping University, partially funded by the Swedish Research Council through Grant No. 2018-05973.
