Quantum Spins Move a Centimeter-Scale Diamond for the First Time in the Lab

In a laboratory on the Japanese island of Okinawa, a diamond roughly a centimeter wide has been nudged by nothing more than the quantum spin of its own electrons. Researchers at the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology (OIST) report in Science Advances that they levitated a diamond-containing resonator weighing about 100 milligrams and moved it using the force generated by electron spin alone. It is the first time a quantum effect has been observed directly manipulating an object massive enough to be meaningfully influenced by gravity, and it pushes the boundary between the quantum world and the classical one eight to nine orders of magnitude beyond the scale of previous spin-mechanical experiments.

The achievement matters because quantum mechanics, for all its technological triumphs, has been tested almost exclusively at scales far removed from human experience. Lasers, MRI scanners, semiconductors, and quantum computers all rest on quantum principles, yet the phenomena themselves have been demonstrated on subatomic and nanoscopic particles. Demonstrating quantum behavior in objects large enough for gravity to play a significant role has proven extraordinarily difficult, because big objects are much harder to isolate from environmental noise such as heat and vibration than tiny ones. The OIST experiment offers a new starting point for that challenge.

Professor Jason Twamley of the OIST Quantum Machines Unit framed the result as a milestone in a long-running effort. “There have been many efforts to test whether quantum mechanics holds for anything larger than a few tens of nanometers, so far without success,” he said. “Now, we have observed a classical mechanical response to a quantum force on an object that is eight to nine orders of magnitude more massive than the current state-of-the-art spin-mechanical experiments.” In other words, a purely quantum mechanical effect, the collective spin of billions of electrons, produced a measurable, classical push on an object visible to the naked eye.

The experiment rests on a clever combination of components the same team had previously proven individually. At its heart is a diamond laced with billions of nitrogen-vacancy (NV) centers, defects in the crystal lattice where a nitrogen atom sits next to a missing carbon atom. These defects trap unpaired electrons, and each trapped electron behaves as a tiny, controllable quantum magnet through its quantum spin. NV centers are prized in quantum science because they are well understood, easy to control, and possess some of the longest coherence times known, meaning they can maintain quantum superposition at room temperature far longer than most other systems.

To turn those spins into motion, the researchers periodically illuminated the diamond with a green laser. The light polarizes the NV centers into a predefined spin state, generating tiny magnetic fluctuations that push the diamond downward. The diamond itself was suspended above a magnet, connected by a carbon rod to a diamagnetically levitated graphite plate fitted with a small mirror, an assembly shielded from magnetic interference. An interferometer bounced a laser off that mirror to track the resonator’s position with picometer precision, allowing the team to detect the minuscule displacement caused by the spin force. In photographs of the setup, the diamond glows red as electrons in the NV centers are excited to higher energy states by the laser.

First author Anshuman Nayak, a PhD student in the unit, explained the strategic thinking behind the approach. “To test the quantum nature of gravity, we ultimately need to put objects with large enough masses into quantum superposition. And these objects need to be levitated in a vacuum to minimize the influence of environmental noise,” he said. “The typical approach has been to start with extremely small, levitated objects and gradually increase their mass until the effects of gravity become relevant. But levitating macroscale objects using conventional techniques, such as optical traps, has proven extremely challenging.”

That difficulty pushed the OIST team into what Nayak described as the opposite camp: going from large to small. “Just as diamagnetic levitation can lift maglev trains, it can also be used to levitate centimeter-wide objects holding diamonds, where the effect of gravity can be extremely strong, but quantum effects have not been observed,” he said. Diamagnetic levitation exploits the weak repulsion between certain materials and magnetic fields, allowing stable, contact-free suspension without cryogenics or vacuum traps. By building the platform from the top down, the researchers start with an object firmly in the gravitational regime and work toward coaxing quantum behavior out of it, rather than trying to scale a quantum system up.

The deeper motivation reaches back to questions that troubled Einstein in the final decades of his life. Gravity sits at the center of general relativity, a classical theory, yet its effects are vanishingly weak at the nanometer scales where quantum phenomena have been observed. Conversely, positional superposition, in which a particle exists in distinctly different places simultaneously until measured, has only been demonstrated at the microscopic level. Whether gravity is quantum or entirely classical, what happens to information at the center of a black hole, what dark matter and dark energy are, and whether a massive object can truly be in two places at once all remain unanswered, largely because the mathematical, theoretical, and experimental frameworks of quantum and classical physics remain disconnected.

By demonstrating a mechanical effect arising solely from quantum spin on a macroscopic object, the OIST team has created an experimental platform on which such exotic theories can be tested. “We’ve shown a large classical response from a small quantum effect,” Twamley said. “It’s no longer a question of whether such technology is possible, but of how we can refine experimental conditions to achieve quantum superposition within the regime of Einstein’s general relativity.” The path forward involves sharpening the isolation of the levitated resonator, extending coherence times, and gradually building the sensitivity needed to place the entire object’s motion into superposition, a macroscopic analogue of Schrödinger’s famous cat.

The practical payoff may arrive sooner than the philosophical one. The same platform doubles as an extraordinarily precise sensor, capable of detecting minute forces and displacements. The researchers anticipate a new class of ultrasensitive devices for hunting dark matter, detecting gravitational waves, and probing other exotic phenomena that leave only the faintest signatures. “We’re pushing the bar from nanometers to centimeters,” Twamley said. “All we need is another order of magnitude, and we can finally observe Schrödinger’s cat in real life.” For now, the spinning diamond of Okinawa stands as the largest object ever displaced by quantum spin alone, and a promising bridge between two theories that have never quite spoken the same language.

Subject of Research: Spin-force manipulation of a macroscopic levitated diamond resonator using nitrogen-vacancy centers

Article Title: First observation of quantum spins shifting a centimeter-scale object in the lab

Article References: First observation of quantum spins shifting a centimeter-scale object in the lab. (n.d.). Original publication

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: Not provided

Keywords: quantum mechanics, nitrogen-vacancy centers, diamagnetic levitation, quantum gravity, macroscopic superposition, spin-mechanics, OIST, Science Advances, quantum sensors, levitated resonator, dark matter detection, gravitational waves