Levitated sensor for magnetometry in ambient environment

Levitated particle systems have gained attention as a rapidly advancing platform for precision sensing, offering low-loss, highly isolated environments by eliminating mechanical contact and associated noise. Current room-temperature levitation techniques are primarily sensitive to acceleration, and it remains challenging to integrate them with high-sensitivity magnetic sensing. In this work, we demonstrate a diamagnetically stabilized magnetically levitated magnet magnetometer, where the motion of the magnet is detected optically. We achieved a sensitivity of 32 femtoteslas per square root of Hertz, which is adequate for a wide range of applications in biology, chemistry, and fundamental physics, matching the performance of superconducting quantum interference devices and atomic magnetometers, while offering the advantage of operating at room temperature and under Earth’s magnetic field.