This InstituteQ Colloquium features Professor Lukas Novotny from ETH Zürich. The title of his talk is “Quantum Control of a Levitated Nanoparticle.”
Professor Lukas Novotny is a leading authority in nanophotonics and optical physics, currently serving as Professor of Photonics at ETH Zürich, where he leads the Photonics Laboratory. His research focuses on controlling light–matter interactions at the nanoscale, with applications in quantum optics, ultrasensitive detection, and photon emission.
Originally from the Czech Republic, he earned both his diploma and Ph.D. in electrical engineering from ETH Zürich, followed by research positions in the United States, including at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory and the University of Rochester, where he became a full professor.
Professor Novotny is widely recognized for his contributions to near-field optics and optical antennas, and is co-author of the influential textbook Principles of Nano-Optics. He is a Fellow at Optica and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He is also a founding member of the ETH Quantum Center and a recipient of an ERC Synergy Grant for the Q-Xtreme project, which aims to place a 100-nanometer object into a quantum superposition state for the first time.
Event details:
When: 10:15-11:15 on 29.5.2026
Where: University of Eastern Finland at Joensuu & online
Host: University of Eastern Finland Associate Professor Andreas Norrman
From Lukas Novotny: What will your talk discuss?
We use levitated nanoparticles to explore the quantum-classical boundary and to investigate the limits of measurement precision. To this end, we utilize the many degrees of freedom of these nanoparticles, including translations, librations, rotations and vibrations. I will report on our recent progress in controlling these modes and discuss applications in sensing and metrology.
