My research sits at the interface of optomechanics, quantum information and stochastic and quantum thermodynamics. I am an experimentalist: I build optical-tweezer platforms that levitate nanoparticles in vacuum, and I develop the tools to control them, from programmable optical potentials to fast feedback electronics.
01 · Current
Quantum control of levitated nanoparticles
Can a glass sphere about a hundred nanometres across be put into a spatial quantum superposition? I develop fast, programmable control of the optical potential that holds a nanoparticle, so that its wavefunction can expand in a nonlinear potential and show matter-wave interference on short timescales (PNAS 2024). In parallel, I am building an experiment that uses FPGA-based control to generate genuine quantum squeezing of the centre-of-mass motion of a levitated particle.
02 · Current
Thermodynamics of information
Landauer’s principle says that erasing one bit of information costs at least kBT ln 2 of work. A levitated particle in a double-well potential is an ideal one-bit memory to test this. With spatio-temporal control of the optical potential, I showed that a memory starting out of equilibrium can be erased at a cost below the Landauer bound, using the non-equilibrium state as a thermodynamic resource (Phys. Rev. Research 2025). This line of work, started as my FWF Lise Meitner project, now looks at optimal memories and entropy production in nonlinear potentials.
03 · Current
Interacting levitated systems & feedback
Going beyond a single particle, we demonstrated tunable light-induced dipole–dipole coupling between two levitated nanoparticles (Science 2022). I also work on the enabling technology: clean delivery of nanoparticles into ultra-high vacuum through hollow-core fibres (APL 2024), and, with the Automation and Control Institute of TU Wien, real-time feedback that stabilises a particle at the intensity minimum of an optical potential (Opt. Express 2024, Control Eng. Practice 2026).
04 · Earlier work
Photonic quantum information
During my PhD and postdoc in Rome, I generated, certified and used hyperentangled and cluster states of photons, both in bulk optics and on femtosecond-laser-written chips (Light Sci. Appl. 2016). I used them for multiparameter quantum metrology (PRL 2017), to measure the capacities of quantum channels, to extract work from multipartite entanglement, and to observe signatures of quantum Darwinism.
Funding
| Year | Grant |
|---|---|
| 2024 | FWF stand-alone project: Control of motional quantum states for levitated particles (Principal Investigator) |
| 2023 | ESQ Discovery Grant: Optimal memory performance: a control-based thermodynamic approach |
| 2021–2023 | FWF Lise Meitner Fellowship M2915: Entropy generation in nonlinear levitated optomechanics |
| 2019 | Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions Seal of Excellence |
| 2018 | SPIE Focus Conference Award |
Collaborators
I am fortunate to work with Markus Aspelmeyer, Nikolai Kiesel and the levitation team in Vienna, with the control group of Andreas Kugi and Andreas Deutschmann-Olek at TU Wien, and with theory colleagues including Eric Lutz, Oriol Romero-Isart, Klaus Hornberger, Benjamin Stickler, Mauro Paternostro and Matteo Carlesso.