近日，英国曼彻斯特大学的Jayadev Vijayan及其研究团队取得一项新进展。经过不懈努力，他们揭示悬浮光机械中腔介导的长程相互作用。相关研究成果已于2024年3月1日在国际知名学术期刊《自然—物理学》上发表。

该研究团队地结合了多粒子光学悬浮和基于腔的量子控制技术，展示了真空中纳米颗粒间可编程的腔介导相互作用。这种独特的相互作用由空间分离的粒子在腔内散射的光子所介导，形成了本质上强大的长程耦合。研究人员深入探讨了腔失谐和粒子间距对相互作用强度的影响，并成功验证了不同机械模式间相互作用的可调性。

这一创新性的研究不仅为探索具有可编程腔介导相互作用的纳米粒子阵列中的多体效应提供了可能，还为实现运动纠缠以及将相互作用粒子阵列应用于光机械传感领域打开了新的大门。

据悉，设计腔介导相互作用的能力已成为生成非局部关联以及研究多体系统中非平衡现象的重要工具。最近，悬浮光机械系统成功扩展至多粒子体系，有望利用强耦合大质量振荡器阵列来探索复杂的相互作用系统并实现传感应用。

附：英文原文

Title: Cavity-mediated long-range interactions in levitated optomechanics

Author: Vijayan, Jayadev, Piotrowski, Johannes, Gonzalez-Ballestero, Carlos, Weber, Kevin, Romero-Isart, Oriol, Novotny, Lukas

Issue&Volume: 2024-03-01

Abstract: The ability to engineer cavity-mediated interactions has emerged as a powerful tool for the generation of non-local correlations and the investigation of non-equilibrium phenomena in many-body systems. Levitated optomechanical systems have recently entered the multiparticle regime, which promises the use of arrays of strongly coupled massive oscillators to explore complex interacting systems and sensing. Here we demonstrate programmable cavity-mediated interactions between nanoparticles in vacuum by combining advances in multiparticle optical levitation and cavity-based quantum control. The interaction is mediated by photons scattered by spatially separated particles in a cavity, resulting in strong coupling that is long-range in nature. We investigate the scaling of the interaction strength with cavity detuning and interparticle separation and demonstrate the tunability of interactions between different mechanical modes. Our work will enable the exploration of many-body effects in nanoparticle arrays with programmable cavity-mediated interactions, generating entanglement of motion, and the use of interacting particle arrays for optomechanical sensing.

DOI: 10.1038/s41567-024-02405-3

Source: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41567-024-02405-3