Related papers: Enhanced optical trapping via structured scatterin…
When studying the motion of optically trapped particles on the $\mu s$ time scale, in low viscous media such as air, inertia cannot be neglected. Resolution of unusual and interesting behaviour not seen in colloidal trapping experiments is…
We propose the optical trapping of Rayleigh particles using tailored anisotropic and hyperbolic metasurfaces illuminated with a linearly polarized Gaussian beam. This platform permits to engineer optical traps at the beam axis with a…
Optically trapped nanospheres in high-vaccum experience little friction and hence are promising for ultra-sensitive force detection. Here we demonstrate measurement times exceeding $10^5$ seconds and zeptonewton force sensitivity with…
Anti-Brownian traps confine single particles in free solution by closed-loop feedback forces that directly counteract Brownian motion. The extended-duration measurement of trapped objects allows detailed characterization of photophysical…
When a single two-level atom interacts with a pair of Laguerre-Gaussian beams with opposite helicity, this leads to an efficient exchange of angular momentum between the light field and the atom. When the radial motion is trapped by an…
We propose and experimentally demonstrate a novel optical method for trapping and cooling dielectric nanospheres at (sub)-micron distances from a reflective metallic surface. By translating a tilted mirror towards the focus of a single-beam…
In order to increase the measured phase of an atom interferometer and improve its sensitivity, researchers attempt to increase the enclosed space-time area using two methods: creating larger separations between the interferometer arms and…
We show how an experimentally realized set of operations on a single trapped ion is sufficient to simulate a wide class of Hamiltonians of a spin-1/2 particle in an external potential. This system is also able to simulate other physical…
We demonstrate an optical bottle beam trap created by interfering two fundamental Gaussian beams with different waists. The beams are derived from a single laser source using a Mach-Zehnder interferometer whose arms have unequal…
Radiation pressure forces in a focussed laser beam can be used to trap microscopic absorbing particles against a substrate. Calculations based on momentum transfer considerations show that stable trapping occurs before the beam waist, and…
Optical trapping is an indispensable tool in physics and the life sciences. However, there is a clear trade off between the size of a particle to be trapped, its spatial confinement, and the intensities required. This is due to the decrease…
We study the effects of the spin orbit interaction (SOI) of light in an optical trap and show that the propagation of the tightly focused trapping beam in a stratified medium can lead to significantly enhanced SOI. For a plane polarized…
Optically coupled nanoparticles suffer the action of multiple electromagnetic forces when they are illuminated by light. In general, two kinds of forces are commonly assumed: binding forces that make them attract/repel each other and…
We describe the use of laser-enhanced etching of fused silica in order to build multi-layer ion traps. This technique offers high precision of both machining and alignment of adjacent wafers. As examples of designs taking advantage of this…
We demonstrate optical interferometry beyond the limits imposed by the photon wavelength using 'triggered' entangled photon pairs from a semiconductor quantum dot. Interference fringes of the entangled biphoton state reveals a periodicity…
We use an all-optical trap to confine a strongly attractive two-state mixture of lithium fermions. By measuring the rate of evaporation from the trap, we determine the effective elastic scattering cross section (4 PI a^2) to show that the…
Optical binding allows creation of mechanically stable nanoparticle configurations owing to formation of self-consistent optical trapping potentials. While the classical diffraction limit prevents achieving deeply subwavelength…
We propose to introduce additional control in levitated optomechanics by trapping a meta-atom, i.e. a subwavelength and high-permittivity dielectric particle supporting Mie resonances. In particular, we theoretically demonstrate that…
We perform spectroscopy on the hyperfine splitting of $^{85}$Rb atoms trapped in far-off-resonance optical traps. The existence of a spatially dependent shift in the energy levels is shown to induce an inherent dephasing effect, which…
It has been seen recently that when probing a nanoscale object to determine, for example, size or position via light scattering, significant advantage in measurement precision can be gained from exploiting phase singularities in a…