Phase-adaptive cooling of fringe-trapped nanoparticles at room temperature in hollow-core photonic crystal fiber

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates phase-adaptive feedback cooling of silica nanoparticles in a hollow-core photonic crystal fiber at room temperature, effectively damping their motion without excess heating, and validates the mechanism with analytical models.

Contribution

Introduces a novel phase-adaptive feedback cooling method using relative optical phase modulation in hollow-core fibers, enabling efficient damping of nanoparticle motion at room temperature.

Findings

Achieved 50% reduction in axial temperature at 2 mbar pressure.

Lowered particle temperature to 58.6 K at 0.5 mbar.

Validated the cooling mechanism with analytical modeling.

Abstract

Active feedback cooling of levitated dielectric particles is a pivotal technique for creating ultrasensitive sensors and probing fundamental physics. Here we demonstrate phase-adaptive feedback cooling of silica nanoparticles optically trapped in standing-wave potential formed by two co-linearly polarized counterpropagating diffraction-free guided modes in a hollow-core photonic crystal fiber at room temperature. Unlike standard laser intensity- or Coulomb force-based feedback, our approach modulates the relative optical phase between the counterpropagating fundamental modes proportionally to the particle's axial momentum. This generates a Stokes-like dissipative force which effectively damps the center-of-mass motion without introducing excess heating and can also work with uncharged particles. At 2 mbar air pressure, the axial center-of-mass temperature of a 195 nm silica particle is reduced by half upon application of the feedback and to 58.6 K at 0.5 mbar. The measured mechanical spectra agree well with our analytical model, validating the cooling mechanism. We envision this approach will open up pathways towards long-range, coherent control of mesoscopic particles inside hollow-core fibers, offering a fiber-integrated versatile platform for future quantum manipulation.