Roadmap for Optical Tweezers

TL;DR

This paper provides a comprehensive overview of optical tweezers, covering their theoretical basis, design, and diverse applications across scientific disciplines, highlighting recent advances and future perspectives.

Contribution

It offers a detailed roadmap of optical tweezers, integrating theoretical foundations, technological developments, and potential applications in various research fields.

Findings

Optical tweezers enable precise manipulation of microscopic objects.

They have been successfully applied in biophysics, physics, and engineering.

Recent advances have expanded their capabilities and applications.

Abstract

Optical tweezers are tools made of light that enable contactless pushing, trapping, and manipulation of objects ranging from atoms to space light sails. Since the pioneering work by Arthur Ashkin in the 1970s, optical tweezers have evolved into sophisticated instruments and have been employed in a broad range of applications in life sciences, physics, and engineering. These include accurate force and torque measurement at the femtonewton level, microrheology of complex fluids, single micro- and nanoparticle spectroscopy, single-cell analysis, and statistical-physics experiments. This roadmap provides insights into current investigations involving optical forces and optical tweezers from their theoretical foundations to designs and setups. It also offers perspectives for applications to a wide range of research fields, from biophysics to space exploration.