Related papers: Photo-Motile Structures
In-vivo, real-time study of the local and collective cellular biomechanical responses requires the fine and selective manipulation of the cellular environment. One innovative pathway is the use of photoactive bio-substrates such as…
Interactive perception enables robots to manipulate the environment and objects to bring them into states that benefit the perception process. Deformable objects pose challenges to this due to significant manipulation difficulty and…
Active materials take advantage of their internal sources of energy to self-organize in an automated manner. This feature provides a novel opportunity to design micron-scale machines with minimal required control. However, self-organization…
We introduce a new class of optical micromotors driven by the spin-orbit interaction of light and spin-driven fluid flows leading to simultaneous rotation and revolution of the micromotors. The micromotors are essentially birefringent…
We propose a method to induce strong effective interactions between photons mediated by an atomic ensemble. To achieve this, we use the so-called stationary light effect to enhance the interaction. Regardless of the single-atom coupling to…
The availability of efficient photon sources with specific properties is important for quantum-technological applications. However, the realization of such photon sources is often challenging and hence alternative perspectives that suggest…
Many active particles, both of biological and synthetic origin, can have a light controllable propulsion speed, a property that in biology is commonly referred to as photokinesis. Here we investigate directed transport of photokinetic…
Recent progress in nanofabrication has led to tremendous technological developments in nanophotonics, which rely on the interaction of light with nanostructured matter. Nanophotonics has experienced a large surge of interest in recent…
Relative motion between soft wet solids arises in a number of applications in natural and artificial settings, and invariably couples elastic deformation and fluid flow. We explore this in a minimal setting by considering a fluid-immersed…
Investigating the interaction of electron beams with materials and light has been a field of research since more than a century. The field was advanced theoretically by the raise of quantum mechanics and technically by the introduction of…
The interaction of light with photosynthetic proteins is an extremely efficient process and has been thoroughly investigated. However, exploring light-matter interactions in hybrid nano-solid-photosynthetic proteins is a relatively new and…
The development of microfluidic devices is still hindered by the lack of robust fundamental building blocks that constitute any fluidic system. An attractive approach is optical actuation because light field interaction is contactless and…
The study of light-matter interaction has led to many fundamental discoveries as well as numerous important technologies. Over the last decades, great strides have been made in increasing the strength of this interaction at the…
Macroscale robotic systems have demonstrated great capabilities of high speed, precise, and agile functions. However, the ability of soft robots to perform complex tasks, especially in centimeter and millimeter scale, remains limited due to…
Extreme deformation of soft matter is central to our understanding of the effects of shock, fracture, and phase change in a variety of systems. Yet, despite, the increasing interest in this area, far-from-equilibrium behaviours of soft…
Photo-induced phase-transitions (PIPTs) driven by highly cooperative interactions are of fundamental interest as they offer a way to tune and control material properties on ultrafast timescales. Due to strong correlations and interactions,…
We attempt to provide physical interpretations of light-induced desorption phenomena that have recently been observed for alkali atoms on glass surfaces of alkali vapor cells used in atomic physics experiments. We find that the observed…
We demonstrate facile optical manipulation of shape of birefringent colloidal microparticles made from liquid crystal elastomers. Using soft lithography and polymerization, we fabricate elastomeric microcylinders with weakly undulating…
Controlling the activity of proteins with azobenzene photoswitches is a potent tool for manipulating their biological function. With the help of light, one can change e.g. binding affinities, control allostery or temper with complex…
The physics of light-matter interactions is strongly constrained by both the small value of the fine-structure constant and the small size of the atom. Overcoming these limitations is a long-standing challenge. Recent theoretical and…