Salambô Dago receives ESQ Discovery Grant and Marie-Skłodowska Curie Postdoctoral Fellowship

In optical levitation, a nanoparticle is confined in an optical potential at high vacuum. The optical trap results in scattered photons that localizes the particle and heats its motion, but has recently also enabled quantum-limited position readout and subsequent cooling to the ground state. In the FLIP project, we propose a first experiment in levitation that reverses this paradigm: An optical field enables a quantum measurement of the nanoparticle position, whose strength is tunable. Feedback control provides cooling and position stabilization of the particle, rendering a confining potential unnecessary or, as the optical field still provides a potential, secondary. More specifically, here we propose to experimentally implement optimal quantum control-based feedback stabilization of the levitated object on an optical inverted potential, where the intensity is zero (dark field). One big advantage of this innovative technique is to go beyond the main current optical levitation limitation and avoid internal heating of the levitated particle.
The first year of this project is supported by the ESQ Discovey grant: the latter allows the initiaion of an ambitious new project in ideal conditions, therefore fostering exploration and innovation.
Besides, her Post-Doctoral position in the Kiesel Group to start the FLIP project has been awarded with the Marie-Skłodowska Curie Postdoctoral Fellowship (MSCA-PF). Funded by the European Union, the MSCA-PF enhances (through the implementation of an original and personalised research project) the creative and innovative potential of excellent postdoctoral researchers who wish to acquire new skills through advanced training, international, interdisciplinary and inter-sectoral mobility. Having obtained her PhD in France in 2022 at the ENS de Lyon and her relocation to Vienna fall within the European mobility promoted by the MSCA-PF.