Contacts:
Kirstine Berg-Sørensen, 4525-3101 (kirstine.berg-sorensen@fysik.dtu.dk)
Optical trapping and manipulation by a single laser beam, so-called optical tweezers, was the topic of part of the Nobel Prize in physics, awarded to Arthur Ashkin in 2018. In this project, you will get the chance to apply a similar optical trap to manipulate and trap micron-sized diamonds with nitrogen-vacancy centers. These diamonds are an essential part of development of new quantum technologies as the embedded nitrogen-vacancy center in the simplest picture constitute a two-level system within the diamonds and may thus be described by introductory quantum mechanics.
Two types of optical traps are available to the project, either a two-counterpropagating-beam trap made from optical fibers, as illustrated in the figure, or a single beam optical tweezers setup. A priori, the project is mainly experimental, but may be accommodated to your individual interest and for example include coding related to data analysis and data acquisition.