Recoil-limited feedback cooling of single nanoparticles near the ground state in an optical lattice

Abstract: We report on direct feedback cooling of single nanoparticles in an optical lattice to near their motional ground state. We find that the laser phase noise triggers severe heating of nanoparticles' motion along the optical lattice. When the laser phase noise is decreased by orders of magnitude, the heating rate is reduced and accordingly the occupation number is lowered to about three. We establish a model directly connecting the heating rate and the measured laser phase noise and elucidates that the occupation number under the lowest laser phase noise in our system is limited only by photon recoil heating. Our results show that the reduction of the laser phase noise near the oscillation frequency of nanoparticles is crucial for bringing them near the ground state and pave the way to sensitive accelerometers and quantum mechanical experiments with ultracold nanoparticles in an optical lattice.