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The Photon Drag Effect (PDE) is a nonlinear process akin to optical rectification in which the momentum of light is transferred to charged carriers and converted to a DC voltage. Here, we experimentally demonstrate the spin-polarized…
An all-optically driven strategy to govern a liquid crystalline collective molecular nonlinear oscillator is discussed. It does not require external feedbacks of any kind while the oscillator and a time-depending perturbation both are…
Phototaxis is a light driven self-locomotion of mass and a common phenomenon in motile organisms with varieties of motility such as in bacteria, algae, etc. In naturally occurring organisms, mechanical force is generated utilising their…
Rotational motion of charges in plasmonic nanostructures plays an important role in transferring angular momentum between light and matter on the nanometer scale. Although sophisticated control of rotational charge motion has been achieved…
A heterogeneous and dilute suspension of catalytically active colloids is studied as a non-equilibrium analogue of ionic systems, which has the remarkable feature of action-reaction symmetry breaking. Symmetrically coated colloids are found…
Monodispersed magnetite (Fe3O4) nanoparticles were synthesized. Transmission electron microscopy study shows that the nanoparticles are in the shape of Wagner-Seitz crystals. The magnetite nanoparticles self-assemble into body-centered…
Active forces occurring within cells can drive crucial biological processes that involve spontaneous organization and shape change, such as cell division. Motivated by recent in vitro experiments of nematic droplets of cytoskeletal…
Control of physical behaviors of nematic colloids and colloidal crystals has been demonstrated by tuning particle shape, topology, chirality and surface charging. However, the capability of altering physical behaviors of such soft matter…
We induce and investigate the coarsening and melting dynamics of an initially static nanoparticle colloidal monolayer at an ionic liquid-vacuum interface, driven by a focused, scanning electron beam. Coarsening occurs through grain…
Electrophoresis is a motion of charged dispersed particles relative to a fluid in a uniform electric field. The effect is widely used to separate macromolecules, to assemble colloidal structures, to transport particles in nano- and…
Natural materials typically interact weakly with the magnetic component of light which greatly limits their applications. This has led to the development of artificial metamaterials and metasurfaces. However, natural atoms, where only…
Photonic molecules, i.e. artificial structures composed of coherently coupled optical cavities, are paradigmatic systems for investigating fundamental phenomena across photonics, quantum optics and topological physics. In recent years,…
Control of the angular momentum of light is a key technology for next-generation nano-optical devices and optical communications, including quantum communication and encoding. We propose an approach to controllably generate circularly…
We investigate experimentally the single-particle motion in water of silica colloidal beads half-coated with carbon under the action of a converging laser beam. The beads are self-propelled in this medium by means of self-thermophoresis…
In this Account, we describe how synthetic motors that operate by self-diffusiophoresis make use of a self-generated concentration gradient to drive motor motion. A description of propulsion by self-diffusiophoresis is presented for Janus…
Colloidal particles can self-assemble into various ordered structures in fluid flows that have potential applications in biomedicine, materials synthesis and encryption. These dynamic processes are also of fundamental interest for probing…
Colloidal nanocrystals are unique optical gain materials due to their high intrinsic absorption, excellent quantum yield, and tunable emission. However, integration of colloidal nanocrystal solutions into photonic systems for lasing…
Self-assembly via nanoscale phase-separation offers an elegant route to fabricate nanocomposites with physical properties unattainable in single-component systems. One important class of nanocomposites are optical metamaterials which…
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…
We study colloidal particles in a nematic-liquid-crystal-filled microfluidic channel and show how elastic interactions between the particle and the channel wall lead to different particle dynamics compared with conventional microfluidics.…