Over the last few years, optical tweezers have been capturing the attention of the quantum world. Recent experiments pushed the ball forward by extending this trapping technique alkaline-earth atoms (atoms with two, rather than one, valence electrons). We talk to Alexandre Cooper about those state-of-the-art results.

A. Cooper et al, Alkaline-Earth Atoms in Optical Tweezers, PRX 8, 041055 (2018) (paper, preprint)

J. P. Covey et al, 2000-Times Repeated Imaging of Strontium Atoms in Clock-Magic Tweezer Arrays, PRL 122, 173201 (2019) (paper, preprint)