In 1986, American physicist Arthur Ashkin developed a fascinating tool that could gently pick and move microscopic objects like cells and molecules without touching them. This tool, called optical ...

Three’s company: researchers at Harvard University have trapped individual triatomic molecules. (Courtesy: iStock/Emilija Randjelovic) Individual polyatomic molecules have been trapped in arrays of ...

JILA physicists have demonstrated a novel atomic clock design that combines near-continuous operation with strong signals and high stability, features not previously found together in a single type of ...

JILA physicists have boosted the signal power of their atomic "tweezer clock" and measured its performance in part for the first time, demonstrating high stability close to the best of the latest ...

A team of physicists in the US has reported that an atomic clock based on laser tweezers offers some “unique possibilities” for a future generation of super-precise timepieces. Demonstrated at JILA ...

The manipulation of neutral atoms by light is one of the most important scientific discoveries in the field of quantum physics in the last three decades. Researchers show that increasing the number of ...

Scientists who have thrown a single atom from one pair of optical tweezers to another say that the feat could be used to build better quantum computers. When you purchase through links on our site, we ...

Today’s most accurate clocks mark the passage of time using transitions of electrons between two energy states in an atom. Such clock transitions are typically induced by the oscillating light wave of ...

Physicists have boosted the signal power of their atomic 'tweezer clock' and measured its performance in part for the first time, demonstrating high stability close to the best of the latest ...