American Physical Society  September 3, 2020 Ordinarily the transmission of light from a laser can be cut in half when obscured by such a nanoparticle, but the molecule’s presence causes 10% more light to be transmitted. With better control of the system, the molecule-nanoparticle combination could potentially become transparent to the laser. The effect could lead to optical switches in which light transmission would be controlled by single molecules. Researchers in Germany have demonstrated that the extinction cross section of a large gold nanoparticle can be substantially reduced—i.e., the particle becomes more transparent—if a single molecule is placed in its […]