  We present an experimental realization of a biased optical periodic potential
in the low friction limit. The noise-induced bistability between locked
(torsional) and running (spinning) states in the rotational motion of a
nanodumbbell is driven by an elliptically polarized light beam tilting the
angular potential. By varying the gas pressure around the point of maximum
intermittency, the rotational effective diffusion coefficient increases by more
than 3 orders of magnitude over free-space diffusion. These experimental
results are in agreement with a simple two-state model that is derived from the
Langevin equation through using timescale separation. Our work provides a new
experimental platform to study the weak thermal noise limit for diffusion in
this system.
