Towards real-world applications of levitated optomechanics

TL;DR

This paper reviews the principles, emerging applications, challenges, and future opportunities of levitated optomechanics, emphasizing its potential for real-world precision measurement and sensing applications.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive overview of recent advances, applications, and challenges in levitated optomechanics, highlighting pathways toward practical implementations.

Findings

Levitated particles enable ultrasensitive force and torque measurements.

Applications include acceleration sensing, magnetic field detection, and biological sensing.

Challenges involve system integration and minimizing external disturbances.

Abstract

Levitated optomechanics, a rapidly expanding field that employs light to monitor and manipulate the mechanical motion of levitated objects, is increasingly relevant across physics, engineering, and other fields. This technique, which involves levitating micro- and nano-scale objects in a vacuum where they exhibit high-quality motion, provides an essential platform for precision measurements. Noted for their ultra-high sensitivity, levitated particles hold potential for a wide range of real-world applications. This perspective article briefly introduces the principle of optical levitation and the dynamics of levitated particles. It then reviews the emerging applications of levitated particles in ultrasensitive force and torque measurements, acceleration and rotation sensing, electric and magnetic field detection, scanning probe microscopy, localized vacuum pressure gauging, acoustic transduction, and chemical and biological sensing. Moreover, we discuss the present challenges and explore opportunities to minimize and integrate levitation systems for broader applications. We also briefly review optomechanics with ion traps and magnetic traps which can levitate particles in high vacuum without laser heating.