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Cooperatively enhanced dipole forces from artificial atoms in trapped nanodiamonds

Nature Physics volume 13, pages 241–245 (2017)Cite this article

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Abstract

Optical trapping is a powerful tool to manipulate small particles, from micrometre-size beads in liquid environments1 to single atoms in vacuum2. The trapping mechanism relies on the interaction between a dipole and the electric field of laser light. In atom trapping, the dominant contribution to the associated force typically comes from the allowed optical transition closest to the laser wavelength, whereas for mesoscopic particles it is given by the polarizability of the bulk material. Here, we show that for nanoscale diamond crystals containing a large number of artificial atoms, nitrogen–vacancy colour centres, the contributions from both the nanodiamond and the colour centres to the optical trapping strength can be simultaneously observed in a noisy liquid environment. For wavelengths around the zero-phonon line transition of the colour centres, we observe a 10% increase of overall trapping strength. The magnitude of this effect suggests that due to the large density of centres, cooperative effects between the artificial atoms contribute to the observed modification of the trapping strength. Our approach may enable the study of cooperativity in nanoscale solid-state systems and the use of atomic physics techniques in the field of nano-manipulation.

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Figure 1: Trapping nanodiamonds.
Figure 2: Measured relative trap stiffness.
Figure 3: Cooperative dipole force.

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Acknowledgements

We thank O. Romero-Isart for useful discussions. This work was funded by the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Engineered Quantum Systems (EQuS) CE 110001013. G.M.-T. acknowledges funding by the Australian Research Council Future Fellowship programme.

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Author notes

  1. Mathieu L. Juan and Carlo Bradac: These authors contributed equally to this work.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Physics & Astronomy, Macquarie University, New South Wales 2109, Australia

    Mathieu L. Juan, Carlo Bradac, Benjamin Besga, Mattias Johnsson, Gavin Brennen, Gabriel Molina-Terriza & Thomas Volz

  2. ARC Centre of Excellence for Engineered Quantum Systems, Macquarie University, New South Wales 2109, Australia

    Mathieu L. Juan, Carlo Bradac, Benjamin Besga, Mattias Johnsson, Gavin Brennen, Gabriel Molina-Terriza & Thomas Volz

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  1. Mathieu L. Juan
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Contributions

M.L.J. and T.V. conceived the research project following the initial idea by T.V. M.L.J., C.B. and B.B. performed the measurements, and M.L.J., C.B., B.B. and T.V. analysed the data. All authors discussed the data. M.L.J., M.J. and G.B. performed the theoretical calculations presented in the manuscript. M.L.J., C.B., G.M.-T. and T.V. wrote the manuscript, and all authors commented on the manuscript.

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Correspondence to Mathieu L. Juan or Thomas Volz.

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The authors declare no competing financial interests.

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Juan, M., Bradac, C., Besga, B. et al. Cooperatively enhanced dipole forces from artificial atoms in trapped nanodiamonds. Nature Phys 13, 241–245 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1038/nphys3940

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