Description: High-finesse optical cavities coupled to micro/nano-mechanical resonators to measure displacement, force, and radiation-pressure effects at or near the quantum limit.
Briant works in LKB's optomechanics and quantum-measurement team, using high-finesse Fabry-Perot cavities coupled to mirror/membrane mechanical resonators to study radiation-pressure back-action, quantum noise, and force sensing near the standard quantum limit, alongside Pierre-Francois Cohadon and Antoine Heidmann.
Courty provides theoretical support to LKB's optomechanics and quantum-measurement experiments, working on quantum-noise theory for radiation-pressure coupled cavities and standard-quantum-limit-evading measurement schemes.
Guerlin works on quantum-limited optomechanical measurement and quantum non-demolition detection schemes within LKB's optomechanics team, building on cavity-QED-style quantum-measurement concepts applied to mechanical degrees of freedom.
Heidmann is a founding member of LKB's cavity-optomechanics group, whose work on radiation-pressure effects, ponderomotive squeezing, and quantum-limited displacement/force measurement underpins the lab's broader precision-metrology and gravitational-wave-adjacent quantum-optics programme.
Hong runs Hybrid Optical Quantum Technologies within Stuttgart's FMQ institute: optomechanical and opto-mechanical-spin hybrid devices used for quantum sensing and for tests of quantum mechanics at larger mass scales. Work covers cavity/phononic-crystal optomechanics driven toward the quantum regime (ground-state cooling, back-action-evading and quantum-limited displacement/force readout) and the coupling of diamond spin defects to mechanical motion, including levitated-diamond spin-mechanics -- where an NV inside a levitated particle both senses and controls the particle's motion. Relative to the established NV-ensemble quantum-sensing playbook (DEER, nanoscale NMR, T1 relaxometry at pT/sqrt(Hz) ensemble sensitivity), this is the same colour-centre physics, deliberately hybridized with mechanics: the sensing target shifts from magnetic field to force, acceleration and displacement, and the group sits alongside Wrachtrup's NV programme in the same building, which is a considerable practical advantage.
Verlot works on nano-optomechanics and quantum-limited displacement/force sensing with nanowire and levitated resonators, exploring ultrasensitive force detection and fundamental measurement limits. In the broader landscape of NV-centre ensemble quantum sensing (DEER, nano-NMR, T1 relaxometry) operating near pT/sqrt(Hz) sensitivity, this work is complemented by mechanical quantum sensors at the force-sensitivity frontier.