2021, Devi, Anita, Nair, Shruthi S., Yadav, Sumit, De, Arijit K.

Crucial to effective optical trapping is the ability to precisely control the nature of force/potential to be attractive or repulsive. The nature of particles being trapped is as important as the role of laser parameters in determining the stability of the optical trap. In this context, hybrid particles comprising of both dielectric and metallic materials offer a wide range of new possibilities due to their tunable optical properties. On the other hand, femtosecond pulsed excitation is shown to provide additional advantages in tuning of trap stiffness through harnessing optical and thermal nonlinearity. Here we demonstrate that (metal/dielectric hybrid) core/shell type and hollow-core type nanoparticles experience more force than conventional core-type nanoparticles under both continuous-wave and, in particular, ultrafast pulsed excitation. Thus, for the first time, we show how tuning both materials properties as well as the nature of excitation can impart unprecedented control over nanoscale optical trapping and manipulation leading to a wide range of applications.

2019, Revelli, A., Moretti, Sala, M., Monaco, G., Becker, P., Bohatý, L., Hermanns, M., Koethe, T.C., Fröhlich, T., Warzanowski, P., Lorenz, T., Streltsov, S.V., van Loosdrecht, P.H.M., Khomskii, D.I., van den Brink, J., Grüninger, M.

Young’s archetypal double-slit experiment forms the basis for modern diffraction techniques: The elastic scattering of waves yields an interference pattern that captures the real-space structure. Here, we report on an inelastic incarnation of Young’s experiment and demonstrate that resonant inelastic x-ray scattering (RIXS) measures interference patterns, which reveal the symmetry and character of electronic excited states in the same way as elastic scattering does for the ground state. A prototypical example is provided by the quasi-molecular electronic structure of insulating Ba 3 CeIr 2 O 9 with structural Ir dimers and strong spin-orbit coupling. The double “slits” in this resonant experiment are the highly localized core levels of the two Ir atoms within a dimer. The clear double-slit-type sinusoidal interference patterns that we observe allow us to characterize the electronic excitations, demonstrating the power of RIXS interferometry to unravel the electronic structure of solids containing, e.g., dimers, trimers, ladders, or other superstructures.

2017, Liu, Yingliang, Guchhait, Biswajit, Siebert, Torsten, Fingerhut, Benjamin P., Elsaesser, Thomas

Molecular couplings between DNA and water together with the accompanying processes of energy exchange are mapped via the ultrafast response of DNA backbone vibrations after OH stretch excitation of the water shell. Native salmon testes DNA is studied in femtosecond pump-probe experiments under conditions of full hydration and at a reduced hydration level with two water layers around the double helix. Independent of their local hydration patterns, all backbone vibrations in the frequency range from 940 to 1120 cm-1 display a quasi-instantaneous reshaping of the spectral envelopes of their fundamental absorption bands upon excitation of the water shell. The subsequent reshaping kinetics encompass a one-picosecond component, reflecting the formation of a hot ground state of the water shell, and a slower contribution on a time scale of tens of picoseconds. Such results are benchmarked by measurements with resonant excitation of the backbone modes, resulting in distinctly different absorption changes. We assign the fast changes of DNA absorption after OH stretch excitation to structural changes in the water shell which couple to DNA through the local electric fields. The second slower process is attributed to a flow of excess energy from the water shell into DNA, establishing a common heated ground state in the molecular ensemble. This interpretation is supported by theoretical calculations of the electric fields exerted by the water shell at different temperatures.