Nanooptical Traps a Promising Building Block for Quantum Technologies

(Phys.org) Nanooptical traps are a promising building block for quantum technologies. Austrian and German scientists have now removed an important obstacle to their practical use. They were able to show that a special form of mechanical vibration heats trapped particles in a very short time and knocks them out of the trap.
Now, Daniel Hümmer and Oriol Romero-Isart from the Institute of Quantum Optics and Quantum Information of the Austrian Academy of Sciences and the Department of Theoretical Physics at the University of Innsbruck in cooperation with Philipp Schneeweiss and Arno Rauschenbeutel from the Humboldt University of Berlin have carefully analyzed the system. With their theoretical model, they were able to show that a certain form of mechanical vibration of the glass fiber is responsible for the strong heating of the particles.
Up to now, however, the applicability of this technology has been limited by the fact that the atoms have become very hot after a very short time and are lost.