Related papers: Controlling dispersion forces between small partic…

Arthur Ashkin was awarded the 2018 Nobel prize in physics for the invention of optical tweezers. Since the first publication in 1986 Optical Tweezers have been used as a tool to measure forces and rheological properties of microscopic…

Within the framework of unified approach we study the Casimir-Lifshitz interaction, the van der Waals friction force and the radiative heat transfer at nonequilibrium conditions, when the interacting bodies are at different temperatures,…

Precise control of particle positioning is desirable in many optical propulsion and sorting applications. Here, we develop an integrated platform for particle manipulation consisting of a combined optical nanofiber and optical tweezers…

We study the relaxation process of two driven colloidal suspensions in diffusive contact to a steady state, similar to thermalization. We start by studying a single suspension, subjecting it to random driving forces via holographic optical…

Nonperturbative coupling between cavity photons and excitons leads to formation of hybrid light-matter excitations termed polaritons. In structures where photon absorption leads to creation of excitons with aligned permanent dipoles, the…

Optical tweezers confine a particle in an intensity-defined potential well by engaging its local multipoles. In this picture, eliminating far-field scattering from the particle should cancel the optical force, as the multipole moments…

Many microorganisms, with phytoplankton and zooplankton as prominent examples, display phototactic behaviour, that is, the ability to perform directed motion within a light gradient. Here we experimentally demonstrate that sensing of light…

Electromagnetic fluctuation-induced forces between atoms and surfaces are generally known as Casimir-Polder interactions. The exact knowledge of these forces is rapidly becoming important in modern experimental set-ups and for technological…

The critical Casimir effect provides a thermodynamic analogue of the well-known quantum mechanical Casimir effect. It acts between two surfaces immersed in a critical binary liquid mixture, and results from the confinement of concentration…

Microscopic control over polar molecules with tunable interactions would enable realization of novel quantum phenomena. Using an applied electric field gradient, we demonstrate layer-resolved state preparation and imaging of ultracold…

Electrical discharge at the smallest possible length and charge scales is not well understood. Using optical tweezers, we investigate spontaneous discharges of a single micron-scale particle levitated in air. These ``microdischarges'' have…

Optical tweezers that utilize a highly focused, linearly polarized laser beam exhibit strong trap stiffness asymmetry, which originates from the anisotropic field distribution in the transverse plane. Based on the previous study of…

We review studies of the fluctuations of light made accessible by the invention of the laser and the strong interactions realized in cavity QED experiments. Photon antibunching advocating the discrete (particles), is contrasted with…

Microscopy and optical imaging are drastically limited by the inhomogeneities encountered by the light while propagating from the object of interest to the detection system. In this context, adaptive optics and wavefront manipulation are…

Self-assembly of colloidal particles is a promising avenue to control the shape and dynamics of larger aggregates. However, achieving the necessary fine control over the dynamics and specificity of the bonds between such particles remains a…

Although coherent light is usually required for the self-organization of regular spatial patterns from optical beams, we show that peculiar light matter interaction can break this evidence. In the traditional method to record laser-induced…

We photoionize laser-cooled atoms with a laser beam possessing spatially periodic intensity modulations to create ultracold neutral plasmas with controlled density perturbations. Laser-induced fluorescence imaging reveals that the density…

The transport of motile entities across modulated energy landscapes plays an important role in a range of phenomena in biology, colloidal science and solid-state physics. Here, an easily implementable strategy that allows for the collective…

We propose a method to tune interactions between absorptionless colloidal particle pairs. This is achieved via optimization of the spectral energy density of a homogeneous random optical field. Several standard and more exotic interaction…

We have theoretically investigated optical tweezing of gain-functionalized microspheres using a highly focused single beam in the nonparaxial regime. We employ the Mie-Debye theory of optical tweezers to calculate the optical force acting…