BACKGROUND Levitation of large objects has become a widely used technique in science
and engineering, and the control of levitated nano-and micro-objects in vacuum has gained …

Optomechanics is concerned with the use of light to control mechanical objects. As a field, it
has been hugely successful in the production of precise and novel sensors, the …

Optical tweezers are tools made of light that enable contactless pushing, trap**, and
manipulation of objects, ranging from atoms to space light sails. Since the pioneering work …

Torque sensors such as the torsion balance enabled the first determination of the
gravitational constant by Henri Cavendish and the discovery of Coulomb's law. Torque …

We experimentally realize cavity cooling of all three translational degrees of motion of a
levitated nanoparticle in vacuum. The particle is trapped by a cavity-independent optical …

By isolating from the environment and precisely controlling mesoscopic objects, levitation in
vacuum has evolved into a versatile technique that has already benefited diverse scientific …

Optically levitated oscillators in high vacuum have excellent environmental isolation and low
mass compared with conventional solid-state sensors, which makes them suitable for …

Propulsive effects of light, which often remain unnoticed in our daily-life experience, manifest
themselves on spatial scales ranging from subatomic to astronomical. Light-mediated forces …

We theoretically show that strong mechanical quantum squeezing in a linear
optomechanical system can be rapidly generated through the dynamical instability reached …

A levitated nonspherical nanoparticle in a vacuum is ideal for studying quantum rotations
and is an ultrasensitive torque detector for probing fundamental particle–surface …