Cooling and control of isolated nanobiological matter (NanoBioCool)
Abstract
The project NanoBioCool will focus on the preparation, isolation, detection, and optical cooling of individualized mesoscopic building blocks of life. We will cover a wide range of objects, from bacterial spores over viruses/phages down to massive proteins and plasmids. In each mass regime, experiments with dielectric nanoparticles shall precede the explorations with biomatter of similar weight to make sure the machine is well understood. New avenues shall also be explored with rigid dielectric particles of about 10^7 amu, for which a quantum regime has not yet been achieved.One key goal of this project is to trap one or a few isolated particles electro-dynamically and/or optically in high vacuum and to cool them electro-dynamically and/or optically to as cold as possible.For manyinteresting applications, cooling to below 1 mK temperatures will already be considered an important step forward: this is true forfuture matter-wave interferometry for experiments on rotational quantum revivals and thus for new tests of the linearity of high-mass quantum mechanics. Future quantum-enhanced metrology will profit from low-energy motional states and ultimate control: this may include single-photon single-molecule recoil spectroscopy or the analysis of molecular properties from collisional decoherence.The systems to be tackled here are distinct from those of all previous studies: Compared to transparent dielectric nanospheres, biologicalnanomaterials have much high internal complexity, fragility, and flexibility. They can change structures with temperature, in the presence of water adducts in vacuum, as a function of their charge and in the act of measurement. Also, the system size pushes towards new frontiers: while several groups worldwide are aiming for the most massive object to explore wave function collapse and the interface to gravity, the present project is focusing on smaller particles. This is a demanding but potentially rewarding goal: it is demanding because themost relevant optical detection processes and cooling forces scale with the particle polarizability alpha_opt oralpha_opt^2. They are thus proportional to the particle mass like m or m^2. Every order of magnitude in mass is therefore also an order of magnitude more difficult. On the other hand, once a smaller system can be cooled to the quantum regime, all quantum effects are more pronounced, since the de Broglie wavelength scales like lambda_dB = h/mv. Lower mass and low velocity can thus be combined to visible quantum effects.This proposal covers blue-sky research: The challenges ahead are substantial and only the results of our studies can clear the best path to genuine quantum experiments that shall eventually enable a new branch of quantum optomechanics aswell as quantum enhanced sensing and metrology of biological nanomaterials.
Document Details
- Document Type
- DoD Grant Award
- Publication Date
- Apr 12, 2023
- Source ID
- N629092312029
Entities
People
- Markus Arndt
Organizations
- Office of Naval Research
- United States Navy
- University of Vienna