Optical manipulation and tweezers articles within Nature Communications

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  • Article
    | Open Access

    The authors propose a generalization of the equipartition theorem of thermal physics to account for non-Hermitian trapping forces, relevant for the problems in non-equilibrium open systems and advanced nanotechnology.

    • Xiao Li
    • , Yongyin Cao
    •  & Jack Ng

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Multifunctional all-optical logic gate (AOLG) with broadband-based massively parallel processing is desirable for high-speed optical processor. Here, authors propose a reconfigurable all-in-one ultra-broadband AOLG with experimentally achieving 9 fundamental Boolean logics in a single configuration.

    • Jinlong Xu
    • , Chi Zhang
    •  & Lin Zhou

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Conventional optical tomography can have disadvantages, including anisotropic resolution and incomplete imaging of cellular structures. Here, the authors propose an AI-driven 3D cell imaging system with a cell rotator, which offers improved resolution and automated processing.

    • Jiawei Sun
    • , Bin Yang
    •  & Juergen W. Czarske

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Levitated nanoparticles are a new platform for exploring quantum mechanics at macroscopic scales. The authors realize feedback controls of all external degrees of freedom of a nanoparticle, with one translational degree in the quantum ground state.

    • Mitsuyoshi Kamba
    • , Ryoga Shimizu
    •  & Kiyotaka Aikawa

  • Article
    | Open Access

    It is a significant challenge to create an interface-free lateral optical force under the illumination of a single polarized plane wave. Here, the authors provide a minimalist paradigm to address this challenge by exploiting multipolar interplay in a single elongated particle.

    • Fan Nan
    • , Francisco J. Rodríguez-Fortuño
    •  & Xiaohao Xu

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Traditional optical tweezers require high laser powers risking photothermal damage of the trapped objects. Here, the authors present hypothermal opto-thermophoretic tweezers (HOTTs), which use environmental cooling to simultaneously enhance thermophoretic trapping force at low laser powers and suppress the thermal damage to trapped objects.

    • Pavana Siddhartha Kollipara
    • , Xiuying Li
    •  & Yuebing Zheng

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Optical singularities are typically 1D structures like vortices. This study used metasurfaces to position ten identical point singularities with tight confinement. This could miniaturize optical systems for super-resolution microscopy and dark traps.

    • Soon Wei Daniel Lim
    • , Joon-Suh Park
    •  & Federico Capasso

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Manipulation of Janus particles is challenging and has limited precision. Here, the authors propose manipulation of Janus particles by optical forces in the evanescent field of an optical nanofiber, and demonstrate that they exhibit strong transverse localization on the nanofiber and much faster propulsion compared to all-dielectric particles of the same size.

    • Georgiy Tkachenko
    • , Viet Giang Truong
    •  & Síle Nic Chormaic

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Optical binding enables light-induced assembly of many particles within a focus area. Here, the authors demonstrate that optical binding can occur outside the irradiated area by scattered light interacting with the particles outside the focus, generating arc-shape potential wells for particle trapping.

    • Chih-Hao Huang
    • , Boris Louis
    •  & Hiroshi Masuhara

  • Article
    | Open Access

    There is a need to control molecular activities at high spatial precision. Here the authors report a real-time precision opto-control technology that detects a chemical-specific optical response from molecular targets, and precisely control photoswitchable microtubule polymerization inhibitors in cells.

    • Matthew G. Clark
    • , Gil A. Gonzalez
    •  & Chi Zhang

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Charging of interfaces between water and hydrophobic media is a mysterious feature whose nature and origin remain under debate. Here, the authors use opto-thermophoretic tweezers to investigate the interfacial behavior at water/oil interfaces in terms of thermal perturbation of dipole arrangement.

    • Youngsun Kim
    • , Hongru Ding
    •  & Yuebing Zheng

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Optical manipulation of large objects is challenging as optical trap positions are blindly chosen. Here, the authors present off-focus interferometric tracking, which localises optimal grabbing positions with increased refractive index, by analysing the beam deformations of several holographic optical traps.

    • Benjamin Landenberger
    • , Yatish
    •  & Alexander Rohrbach

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Light-driven micromotors can convert energy to motion in sub-millimeter dimensions. Here, the authors extend this concept and introduce reconfigurable micromachines with multiple components, driven by optoelectronic tweezers, and demonstrate new functionalities.

    • Shuailong Zhang
    • , Mohamed Elsayed
    •  & Aaron R. Wheeler

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Metasurfaces allow for vast possibilities of light control. Here, the authors demonstrate on-demand engineering and realization of a broad family of two-dimensional phase singularity sheets and transverse polarization singularity sheets, opening up new aspects of light-matter interaction.

    • Soon Wei Daniel Lim
    • , Joon-Suh Park
    •  & Federico Capasso

  • Article
    | Open Access

    It has been challenging to rotate nanoparticles orbitally via optical trapping beyond the diffraction limit. Here, the authors take advantage of the nonlinear optical effect and demonstrate fast and controlled orbital rotation at subwavelength scale with a femtosecond pulsed Gaussian beam.

    • Yaqiang Qin
    • , Lei-Ming Zhou
    •  & Yuqiang Jiang

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The famous Kramers turnover describes the extent of friction at which the transition rate of a small particle trapped in a bistable potential becomes a maximum. Militaru et al. present a version of this phenomenon pertaining to active colloids driven by non-conservative forces.

    • A. Militaru
    • , M. Innerbichler
    •  & C. Dellago

  • Article
    | Open Access

    It is currently challenging to identify protein structures at low concentrations. Here the authors report optical tweezers-coupled Raman spectroscopy to generate tunable and reproducible SERS enhancements with single-molecule level sensitivity and use the method to detect protein structural features.

    • Xin Dai
    • , Wenhao Fu
    •  & Jinqing Huang

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Implementing metal nanowires in photonic circuits is challenging due to lack of suitable manipulation techniques. Here, the authors present an earthworm-like peristaltic crawling motion mechanism, based on surface plasmons and surface acoustic waves, and show on-chip manipulations of single nanowires.

    • Shuangyi Linghu
    • , Zhaoqi Gu
    •  & Fuxing Gu

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Reaching the strong coupling regime is a crucial step towards room-temperature quantum control with mesoscopic objects. Here, the authors use coherent scattering to demonstrate room temperature strong coupling between a levitated silica particle and a high-finesse optical cavity.

    • Andrés de los Ríos Sommer
    • , Nadine Meyer
    •  & Romain Quidant

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Control of electrical discharge paths would allow several technological applications, but it usually requires air photoionisation with high-peak-power pulsed lasers. Here, instead, the authors exploit the trapping and heating of light-absorbing particles to guide discharge along the desired path.

    • V. Shvedov
    • , E. Pivnev
    •  & A. E. Miroshnichenko

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The second law of thermodynamics cannot be straightforwardly applied to systems with non-Markovian feedback control, and previous extensions to cover that regime have not been tested experimentally. Here, the authors bridge this gap using an optically levitated microsphere in a feedback-cooling system.

    • Maxime Debiossac
    • , David Grass
    •  & Nikolai Kiesel

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Particle manipulation is still challenging even with the many tools available, especially manipulating particles on a surface. Here, the authors report a technique for nanomanipulation of various objects on solid substrates by modulating particle-substrate interactions through laser-induced opto-thermal dynamics.

    • Jingang Li
    • , Yaoran Liu
    •  & Yuebing Zheng

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Sensing DNA bases by surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS) in plasmonic nanopores has suffered from rapid flow through of molecules. Here, the authors attach DNA molecules to gold nanoparticles which, due to electro-plasmonic trapping, allow for controlled residence times and discrimination of single nucleotides.

    • Jian-An Huang
    • , Mansoureh Z. Mousavi
    •  & Francesco De Angelis

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The use of optical traps has been limited to materials dispersed in aqueous media, which restricts the materials and range of experiments. Here, the authors demonstrate the alignment and assembly of composite structures made of a bismuth nanocrystal and a germanium nanowire in organic solvents.

    • Matthew J. Crane
    • , Elena P. Pandres
    •  & Peter J. Pauzauskie

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Current particle manipulation techniques using light are limited by optical effects, such as diffraction, or lack of dynamic capabilities. The authors report a strategy that combines conventional optical traps with plasmonic tweezers to gain maneuverability of the trapped particles while maintaining plasmonic trap efficiencies.

    • Souvik Ghosh
    •  & Ambarish Ghosh

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Molecular movies provide crucial information of fundamental processes like energy and charge transfer, bond breaking etc. Here the authors show the time evolution of the rotational wave packet called the molecular movie of OCS molecules by Coulomb explosion imaging.

    • Evangelos T. Karamatskos
    • , Sebastian Raabe
    •  & Jochen Küpper

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The authors demonstrate an optical trap where particles are trapped inside of a laser cavity. This is possible due to intracavity nonlinear feedback forces that produce stronger confinement on all 3 axes than standard optical tweezers, which greatly reduces the laser intensity needed to trap the same particle.

    • Fatemeh Kalantarifard
    • , Parviz Elahi
    •  & Giovanni Volpe

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Optical tweezing with intense lasers can be harmful to biological specimens and limits the types of materials that can be trapped. Here, the authors demonstrate an indirect optical trapping approach which uses hydrodynamic forces to exert nanoscale-precision control over aqueous particles, without directly illuminating them.

    • Unė G. Būtaitė
    • , Graham M. Gibson
    •  & David B. Phillips

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The measure of microscopic forces is currently dominated by optical methods requiring parameter-based analyses and long data acquisitions. This work describes a fast and parameter-free method that can characterize both the conservative and non-conservative force fields acting on Brownian particles.

    • Laura Pérez García
    • , Jaime Donlucas Pérez
    •  & Giovanni Volpe

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Alignment and orientation of the molecules allows studying the photon-molecule interactions in greater detail. Here the authors demonstrate the three-dimensional orientation of SO2 molecules in using COLTRIMS and orthogonally polarized laser pulses but in the absence of DC field.

    • Kang Lin
    • , Ilia Tutunnikov
    •  & Jian Wu

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Self-interaction of a bound state through its coupling to the continuum is a phenomenon that is very difficult to observe. Here, the authors optically collide atomic clouds of rubidium and potassium to observe the self-interaction energy through precise measurements of magnetically tunable Feshbach resonances.

    • Ryan Thomas
    • , Matthew Chilcott
    •  & Niels Kjærgaard

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Negative optical torque has been predicted theoretically, but experimental demonstrations have been scarce. Here, the authors show that the optical torque in a mesoscopic optical matter array can be reversed depending on number, separation and configuration of nanoparticles in a circularly polarized optical trap.

    • Fei Han
    • , John A. Parker
    •  & Zijie Yan

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Enabling concurrent, high throughput analysis of single nano particles would greatly increase the capacity to study size, composition and inter and intra particle population variance. Here, the authors present a comprehensive platform for single particle automated Raman trapping analysis without any target modification.

    • Jelle Penders
    • , Isaac J. Pence
    •  & Molly M. Stevens

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Synthetic active particles with inter-particle propulsion have been served as a model system to study the collective animal behaviors. Here, Khadka et al. add complexity to the model by spatially controlling particle motions through a laser feedback loop in response to the collective dynamics of particles.

    • Utsab Khadka
    • , Viktor Holubec
    •  & Frank Cichos

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Optical tweezers, while well suited for micro-manipulation, are difficult to apply to volumetric microrheology. Here, Leartprapun et al. combine low-NA optical radiation-pressure forces with sensitive interferometric detection to enable volumetric microrheology with promising applications in biological systems.

    • Nichaluk Leartprapun
    • , Rishyashring R. Iyer
    •  & Steven G. Adie

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Nanomechanical sensors that rely on intrinsic resonance frequencies usually present a tradeoff between sensitivity and bandwidth. In this work, the authors realise an optically driven nanorotor featuring high frequency stability and tunability over a large frequency range.

    • Stefan Kuhn
    • , Benjamin A. Stickler
    •  & James Millen

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Studies on energy-dependent scattering of ultracold atoms were previously carried out near zero collision energies. Here, the authors observe a magnetic Feshbach resonance in ultracold Rb collisions for above-threshold energies and their method can also be used to detect higher partial wave resonances.

    • Milena S. J. Horvath
    • , Ryan Thomas
    •  & Niels Kjærgaard

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