Hearing The Quantum

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)