Since their invention in 1986 by Arthur Ashkin and colleagues, optical tweezers have
become an essential tool in several fields of physics, spectroscopy, biology …

In systems possessing spatial or dynamical symmetry breaking, Brownian motion combined
with unbiased external input signals, deterministic and random alike, can assist directed …

We experimentally demonstrate a class of tractor beams created by coherently superposing
coaxial Bessel beams. These optical conveyors have periodic intensity variations along their …

During the last decade, optical tweezers have been transformed by the combined availability
of spatial light modulators and the speed of low-cost computing to drive them. Holographic …

Control and transport of nanoscale objects in fluids is challenging because of the
unfavorable scaling of most interaction mechanisms to small length scales. We designed …

Propulsive effects of light, which often remain unnoticed in our daily-life experience, manifest
themselves on spatial scales ranging from subatomic to astronomical. Light-mediated forces …

Protein molecular motors—perfected over the course of millions of years of evolution—play
an essential role in moving and assembling biological structures. Recently chemists have …

Holographic optical tweezers use computer-generated holograms to create arbitrary three-
dimensional configurations of single-beam optical traps that are useful for capturing, moving …

Light can influence the motion of particles, from the size of a single cell down to a single
atom. This has led to the field of optical micromanipulation, where one may guide, trap, and …

Collective particle transport across periodic energy landscapes is ubiquitously present in
many condensed matter systems spanning from vortices in high-temperature …