Overview

• Researchers Mitsuyoshi Kamba, Naoki Hara, and Kiyotaka Aikawa demonstrate quantum squeezing of a levitated glass nanoparticle’s motion.
• The team trapped a single nanoscale bead in a focused laser in vacuum, cooled its center-of-mass motion near the lowest energy, modulated the trap, then briefly released it to measure velocity.
• Under optimal timing the measured velocity distribution became narrower than the ground-state uncertainty, providing the defining signature of squeezing.
• The result follows years of work to mitigate instability and environmental noise, yielding reproducible conditions that remain highly sensitive to fluctuations.
• The findings, published in Science (DOI: 10.1126/science.ady4652), establish a platform for probing the quantum–classical transition and point to prospective ultra-precise sensors, including GPS-independent navigation.