A levitated nano-accelerometer sensitized by quantum quench

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates a quantum nano-accelerometer that uses rapid quenching of a nanoparticle's trapping potential to enhance sensitivity, approaching fundamental quantum limits, and opens new avenues for quantum inertial sensing.

Contribution

It introduces a novel quantum nano-accelerometer leveraging quench dynamics to improve sensitivity near the quantum ground state.

Findings

Sensitivity is enhanced through rapid quenching.

Observed sensitivity aligns with quantum Langevin simulations.

Approaches the quantum Fisher information limit.

Abstract

We realize a nanoscale accelerometer exploiting the nonequilibrium dynamics of a nanoparticle near the quantum ground state. We explore the dynamics after quenching the trapping potential and find that rapid quenching provides an instance at which the sensitivity is enhanced due to the minimized uncertainty in the position. With rapid quenching, the observed sensitivity is in good agreement with a numerical simulation based on the quantum Langevin equation and approaches to the limit given by the quantum Fisher information. Our results open up a pathway to quantum inertial sensing sensitized by exploiting quench dynamics.