Related papers: Single-Beam Optical Conveyor Belt for Chiral Parti…
We employ conical refraction of light in a biaxial crystal to create an optical bottle for trapping and manipulation of particles. We show that by just varying the polarization of the input light the bottle can be opened and closed at will.…
The use of tapered optical fibers, i.e., optical nanofibers, for spectroscopy and the detection of small numbers of particles, such as neutral atoms or molecules, has been gaining ground in recent years. In this review, we briefly introduce…
Chirality is a ubiquitous phenomenon in the natural world. Many biomolecules without inversion symmetry such as amino acids and sugars are chiral molecules. Measuring and controlling molecular chirality at a high precision down to the…
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…
A strongly confined light field necessarily exhibits a local polarization that varies on a subwavelength scale. We demonstrate that a single optical mode of such kind can be used to selectively and simultaneously manipulate atomic ensembles…
Visualization and manipulation of nanoscale matter is one of the main and current challenges in nanosciences. To this aim, different techniques have been recently developed to non-invasively trap and manipulate nano-specimens, like…
Versatile manipulation of nano- and microobjects underlies the optomechanics and a variety of its applications in biology, medicine, and lab-on-a-chip platforms. For flexible tailoring optical forces, as well as for extraordinary…
Optical fields can exert forces of chiral nature on molecules and nanoparticles, which would prove extremely valuable in the separation of enantiomers with pharmaceutical applications, yet it is inherently complex, and the varied frameworks…
A very efficient method for the calculation of the effective optical response of nano-structured composite systems allows the design of metamaterials tailored for specific optical polarization properties. We use our method to design 2D…
Selective control of light is essential for optical science and technology with numerous applications. Nanophotonic waveguides and integrated couplers have been developed to achieve selective coupling and spatial control of an optical beam…
By applying the optical nanocircuit concepts to metasurfaces, we propose an effective route to locally control light transmission over a deeply subwavelength scale. This concept realizes the optical equivalent of a transmitarray, whose use…
Optical pulling forces or tractor beams can pull particles against light propagation by redirecting the incident photons forward. This is typically achieved using Bessel beams with very small half-cone angles, which considerably limits its…
The inherently weak chiroptical responses of natural materials limit their usage for controlling and enhancing chiral light-matter interactions. Recently, several nanostructures with subwavelength scale dimensions were demonstrated, mainly…
We demonstrate optical transport of cold cesium atoms over millimeter-scale distances along an optical nanofiber. The atoms are trapped in a one-dimensional optical lattice formed by a two-color evanescent field surrounding the nanofiber,…
Tailored time-dependent variations of the transverse profile together with longitudinal phase shifts of laser beams are studied. It is shown theoretically that a standing wave setup and real-time beam forming techniques (e.g. by…
A new scheme for enantiomer differentiation of chiral molecules using a pair of linearly polarized intense ultrashort laser pulses with skewed mutual polarization is presented. The technique relies on the fact that the off-diagonal…
Tightly confined modes of light, as in optical nanofibers or photonic crystal waveguides, can lead to large optical coupling in atomic systems, which mediates long-range interactions between atoms. These one-dimensional systems can…
An extended interference pattern close to surface may result in both a transmissive or evanescent surface fields for large area manipulation of trapped particles. The affinity of differing particle sizes to a moving standing wave light…
We demonstrate that a single sub-wavelength nanoaperture in a metallic thin film can be used to achieve dynamic optical trapping and control of a single dielectric nanowire. A nanoaperture can trap a nanowire, control its orientation when…
We report the first demonstration that carbon nanotubes can be trapped and manipulated by optical tweezers. This observation is surprising because individual nanotubes are substantially smaller than the wavelength of light, and thus should…