34 lines
2.8 KiB
Markdown
34 lines
2.8 KiB
Markdown
---
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title: "OSIAN: Optomechanical Sensing for Inertial, Accelerometry, and Navigation"
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linkTitle: OSIAN
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funder: "Dstl"
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funder_url: "https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/defence-science-and-technology-laboratory"
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weight: 30
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---
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**OSIAN** is a 4 year DSTL-funded experimental PhD studentship opportunity including industrial placement at [DSTL Porton Down](https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/defence-science-and-technology-laboratory) and possible placement at an Australian partner institution through [DST Australia](https://www.dst.defence.gov.au/).
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The project runs from October 2023 to September 2027.
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## Background
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Optical forces arise when light, which has no mass yet carries momentum, is deflected through interaction with a material object. Lasers of power $\sim 100\,\text{mW}$ focused to a spot $\sim10\,\text{um}$ exert significant forces on objects $\sim100\,\text{nm}$ across.
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These nanoparticles can be levitated, in vacuum, and manipulated by modulating the optical field.
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Interferometric measurement and active feedback techniques allow these systems to approach quantum limits of position sensitivity.
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This research is part of the field of levitated optomechanics. Since the seminal demonstration of feedback cooling to sub-Kelvin temperatures [Gieseler 2012], the field has seen rapid and intense research, with recent achievements including cooling to the quantum-mechanical ground-state with optical cavities [Delić 2020] and in a cryogenic environment [Tebbenjohanns 2021].
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This project will implement an accelerometer through a robust experimental platform, which bridges levitated optomechanics and fiber telecommunications technologies, such as lasers, modulators, and detectors.
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The immediate goals are to build classical devices, where the nanoparticle is treated as a point-like object undergoing Newtonian motion and subject to classical noise sources.
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Several interesting approaches from macroscopic, traditional devices translate and are promising in terms of sensitivity, robustness, reliability, and bandwidth.
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Development of the robust platform provides a route towards *quantum devices*, where the particle is treated as a quantum mechanical object subject to superposition and decoherence. Establishing capability in this classical space is a necessary step towards realising fully quantum-limited devices, for which there are a number of exciting theoretical proposals in accelerometry with predicted sensitivities $\sim10^{-17}\,\text{g}/\sqrt{\text{Hz}}$ [Pontin 2018].
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### References
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- [Gieseler 2012] Gieseler, Deutsch, Quidant, Novotny; PRL 109 103603 (2012)
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- [Delić 2020] Delić et al.; Science 10.1126/science.aba3993 (2020)
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- [Pontin 2018] Pontin et al.; New J. Phys. 20 023017 (2018)
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- [Tebbenjohanns 2021] Tebbenjohanns et al.; Nature 595 378-382 (2021)
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