Francesco Marin

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Physicists entangle levitating glass nanosphere with light at room temperature

As of October 2026: Leading follow-up work to control and scale the entanglement

A glass sphere about 100 nanometers wide, held aloft by laser light, has been quantum-entangled with the light that escapes its trap. The University of Florence team's result, published in Science on October 1, showed the sphere's motion and the outgoing light shared correlations that beat the limits any classical system could produce.

Updated Oct 5

Notable Quotes

"The combination of levitation, high vacuum, and optical cooling allows the quantum correlations to develop before environmental heating destroys them."

from Physicists entangle levitating glass nanosphere with light at room temperature · Updated Oct 5

"The next challenge is to turn that interface from something we observe into something we can actively use, and eventually to connect several such interfaces – several nanospheres in different optical tweezers – into a larger quantum system."

from Physicists entangle levitating glass nanosphere with light at room temperature · Updated Oct 5

"I have always been fascinated by the possibility of observing quantum effects in macroscopic systems, something that occurs notably in quantum optomechanics experiments."

from Physicists entangle levitating glass nanosphere with light at room temperature · Updated Oct 5

"A field that exists only inside a cavity is difficult to use as a quantum resource elsewhere. Once the light leaves the cavity, however, it becomes a traveling quantum system. It can in principle be transmitted through an optical network, measured at another location, or made to interact with another quantum device."

from Physicists entangle levitating glass nanosphere with light at room temperature · Updated Oct 5