(Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory: Berkeley, CA) -- A long-time staple of science fiction is the tractor beam, a technology in which light is used to move massive objects—recall the tractor beam in the movie Star Wars that captured the Millennium Falcon and pulled it into the Death Star. Although tractor beams of this sort remain science fiction, beams of light today are being used to mechanically manipulate atoms or tiny glass beads, with rapid progress being made to control increasingly larger objects. Those who see major roles for optomechanical systems in a host of future technologies will take heart in the latest results from a first-of-its-kind experiment.

Scientists with the U.S. Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) and the University of California (UC) Berkeley, using a unique optical trapping system that provides ensembles of ultracold atoms, have recorded the first direct observations of distinctly quantum optical effects—i.e., amplification and squeezing—in an optomechanical system. Their findings point the way toward low-power quantum optical devices and enhanced detection of gravitational waves, among other possibilities.

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