A Superconducting Levitating Oscillator with < 1 $\mu$Hz Resonance Linewidth

TL;DR

This paper reports a superconducting levitating oscillator at millikelvin temperatures with an ultra-narrow resonance linewidth below 1 microhertz, enabling highly isolated quantum-classical interface experiments.

Contribution

The authors developed a milligram-scale superconducting oscillator with extremely low dissipation and long ring-down time, advancing the realization of nearly closed quantum systems.

Findings

Resonance linewidth less than 0.8 μHz achieved.

Oscillator ring-down time exceeds 110 hours.

Demonstrated drag measurement from helium impurities at femtonewton scale.

Abstract

Experiments aimed at quantifying the interface between quantum and classical physics necessarily require a high degree of isolation from the environment: wavefunction collapse and quantum gravity effects at laboratory scales are predicted to be very subtle. Ideally, such tests would be performed in a closed system at extremely low temperatures in order to rule out any external influence and thermal fluctuations. Cryogenic levitated macroscopic bodies are excellent candidates for an accurate laboratory approximation of such systems, as a tether to another body would violate the requirement for the system to be fully closed. Here we report a significant milestone on the way to a practically suitable approximation of such closed system. We have built a milligram-mass superconducting oscillator operating at millikelvin temperatures showing extremely low dissipation rate, with the oscillator ring-down time exceeding 110 hours. This corresponds to the resonance linewidth of less than 0.8 $\mu$Hz. The experimental setup is highly tunable and is compatible with adiabatic nuclear demagnetisation, promising even lower temperatures and lower dissipation levels in the future. We demonstrate the capability of our device by measuring drag from $^3$He impurities in superfluid $^4$He at a level of $\sim10^{-8}$ with the drag force in the femtonewton range.