This repository contains the sources for my first master thesis. The official submitted version can be found here: https://hdl.handle.net/1887/4195810. Below you can find the abstract.
The twentieth century for physics was marked by the successful theories of quantum mechanics and the theory of general relativity. However, a unification of these two theories has not yet been achieved and is one of the biggest challenges in modern physics. To test the quantum nature of gravity, Bose et al. proposed an experiment to entangle two massive particles through gravity[1]. This thesis is a step towards this experiment and builds on our previous work [2–4]. We demonstrate stable levitation of a NdFeB particle with a diameter of 12 µm in an on-chip planar magnetic Paul trap. Levitation was observed at atmospheric pressure all the way down to 10E−4 mbar. At atmospheric pressure we observed the x, y, γ and β modes, but with very low Q-factors (Q ≈ 5). At lower pressures the Q-factor increases (Q ≈ 3000), and becomes independent of the chamber pressure. The on-chip design opens the possibility to integrate the trap with NV centres to ground state cool the particle. Our results suggest that this method allows the trapping of a 1 µm particle.