(Nanowerk News) Chirality is the property that the structure is not superposable on its mirrored image. Chiral materials exhibit the characteristic feature that they respond differently to left- and ...

The theory of photokinetic effects expresses the forces and torques exerted by a beam of light in terms of experimentally accessible amplitude and phase profiles. We use this formalism to develop an ...

Joost van Mameren explains how quantitative force measurements by optical tweezers can unravel the mechanical properties of biological molecules 1 Forces at work in optical tweezers Qualitative ...

When studying biological cells using optical tweezers, one main issue is the damage caused to the cell by the tool. Giovanni Volpe, University of Gothenburg, has discovered a new type of force that ...

Jan Gieseler and colleagues from Spain, the USA and Switzerland have cooled a silica nanoparticle from room temperature to around 50 mK using an optical gradient trap. Traditional optical cooling ...