Topic: optical tweezers

Fault-tolerant quantum computation must overcome complex control requirements and substantial error-correction overhead. This talk describes reconfigurable neutral-atom arrays in which optical tweezers coherently transport atoms, enabling any-to-any connectivity, high-fidelity programmable operations and mid-circuit processing in a zoned architecture. Parallel control, transversal operations and long-range connections support experiments ranging from precise quantum-scrambling simulations to a universal fault-tolerant processing architecture. Theoretical methods exploiting reconfigurable conne

Philip Jones traces the development of optical tweezers from early ideas about light exerting force on matter. The lecture follows Kepler’s observations of comet tails, Maxwell’s account of radiation pressure and Ashkin’s trapping experiments. It then examines how a focused light field can isolate and manipulate individual microscopic particles. Applications extend beyond the biological work recognised by the 2018 Nobel Prize to chemical and physical research, where gentle manipulation and isolation from surrounding material provide distinctive experimental tools.

Exerting controlled forces in a non-contact way is important in biomedical investigations which require holding, moving, or mechanically probing biomedical samples. Optical and acoustic manipulation of microscopic samples both play a prominent role among suitable technologies. The differences in the physical laws and in the typical length scales governing acoustic and optical forces make them complementary: Acoustic forces can levitate large and heavy particles, which optical tweezers could not handle without adverse high-power effects, while optical forces cover subcellular scales. The talk w

Motility is a crucial virulence factor for many species of bacteria, but it is not fully understood how bacterial motility is practically involved in pathogenicity. This time I will give a talk on the association of motility with pathogenicity in the zoonotic spirochete bacterium Leptospira. Recently, we measured swimming force of individual leptospires using optical tweezers and found that they can generate ~30 times of the swimming force of E. coli. We also observed that leptospires increase the reversal frequency of swimming at the gel-liquid interface, resembling host dermis exposed to con