BACKGROUND Levitation of large objects has become a widely used technique in science
and engineering, and the control of levitated nano-and micro-objects in vacuum has gained …

Optomechanics is concerned with the use of light to control mechanical objects. As a field, it
has been hugely successful in the production of precise and novel sensors, the …

We report on rotating an optically trapped silica nanoparticle in vacuum by transferring spin
angular momentum of light to the particle's mechanical angular momentum. At sufficiently …

Since their invention in 1986 by Arthur Ashkin and colleagues, optical tweezers have
become an essential tool in several fields of physics, spectroscopy, biology …

The imaginary Poynting momentum (IPM) of light has been captivated as an unusual origin
of optical forces. However, the IPM force is predicted only for dipolar magnetoelectric …

Rotations of microscale rigid bodies exhibit pronounced quantum phenomena that do not
exist for their centre-of-mass motion. By levitating nanoparticles in ultra-high vacuum …

Controlling the motional degrees of isolated, single nanoparticles trapped within optical
fields in a high vacuum are seen as ideal candidates for exploring the limits of quantum …

We experimentally realize cavity cooling of all three translational degrees of motion of a
levitated nanoparticle in vacuum. The particle is trapped by a cavity-independent optical …

Rotational optomechanics strives to gain quantum control over mechanical rotors by
harnessing the interaction of light and matter. We optically trap a dielectric nanodumbbell in …

Structured light with more extended degrees of freedom (DoFs) and in higher dimensions is
increasingly gaining traction and leading to breakthroughs such as super-resolution …