Force and acceleration sensing with optically levitated nanogram masses at microkelvin temperatures

Abstract

An apparatus that uses optically levitated objects, together with active feedback cooling, is used to provide an order-of-magnitude improvement on the sensitivity of state-of-the-art accelerometers. The results pave the way to using such sensors as a part of large-scale particle detectors, for assessing the neutrality of matter and dark matter, and for studying short-ranged Yukawa forces.