Our group discovered that laser-driven rearrangement of just a few gold atoms inside nanoscale antennas can be observed by the naked eye.
Because individual atoms or molecules are 100 to 1000 times smaller than the wavelength of visible light, it is notoriously difficult to collect information about their dynamics, especially when they are embedded within larger structures.
In an effort to circumvent this limitation, researchers are engineering metallic nano-antennas that concentrate light into a tiny volume to dramatically enhance any signal coming from the same nanoscale region. Nano-antennas are the backbone of nanoplasmonics, a field that is profoundly impacting biosensing, photochemistry, solar energy harvesting, and photonics.