Taming a macroscopic free mass through continuous quantum measurement

Abstract

The free particle is the most elementary dynamical system in quantum mechanics. Despite remarkable progress in quantum control of increasingly massive solid-state mechanical oscillators, the analogous control of the free-particle counterpart has remained elusive. Dissipation and environmental noise have prevented such control in the inherently low-frequency domain of free-particle dynamics---a regime of growing importance for quantum sensing and tests of fundamental physics. Here we realize a suspended 1-milligram rotor operating in the free-particle regime with exceptional environmental isolation. Combining this isolation with a low-noise measurement architecture, we directly resolve thermal fluctuations in the motion associated with a damping rate of only 7~nHz. Through continuous quantum measurement of the rotor, we localize its otherwise unconfined motion, obtaining conditional states with entropic temperatures as low as 140~nK as a quantitative measure of control in the free-particle regime. This is two orders of magnitude below temperatures previously achieved in tabletop optomechanical experiments. We demonstrate immediate utilities of the new operating regime, setting new constraints on modifications of quantum mechanics and benchmarking inferred entanglement-to-decoherence rate ratios nearly two orders of magnitude beyond the state of the art for tests of gravity at the quantum-classical interface.