In 1986, American physicist Arthur Ashkin developed a fascinating tool that could gently pick and move microscopic objects like cells and molecules without touching them. This tool, called optical ...

Scientists who have thrown a single atom from one pair of optical tweezers to another say that the feat could be used to build better quantum computers. When you purchase through links on our site, we ...

Researchers have created a new version of optical tweezer technology that fixes a heating problem, a development that could open the already highly regarded tools to new types of research and simplify ...

This year's Nobel Prize in Physics, awarded for discoveries in laser physics, recognizes optical tweezers. Now researchers have developed a method that greatly simplifies and improves the use of ...

MIT researchers have harnessed integrated optical phased array (OPA) technology to develop a type of integrated optical tweezers, akin to a miniature, chip-based “tractor beam”—like the one that ...

Joost van Mameren explains how quantitative force measurements by optical tweezers can unravel the mechanical properties of biological molecules 1 Forces at work in optical tweezers Qualitative ...

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Ashkin's discovery has since formed the basis for the development of optical tweezers, a tool frequently used to control the motion of small biological objects and investigate them. Optical tweezers ...

Optical tweezers are a versatile way to trap and manipulate particles and untethered biological cells, exploiting the intensity gradients that can be created by focused lasers. One problem, however, ...

Rochester researchers are trapping nanoparticle-sized silica beads in an optical tweezer in a series of experiments that could shed new light on the fundamental properties of lasers – and perhaps lead ...

One might think that the optical tweezer – a focused laser beam that can trap small particles – is old hat by now. After all, the tweezer was invented by Arthur Ashkin in 1970. And he received the ...

Three years ago, Arthur Ashkin won the Nobel Prize for inventing optical tweezers, which use light in the form of a high-powered laser beam to capture and manipulate particles. Despite being created ...