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Optical trapping, also known as optical tweezing or optical levitation, is a technique that uses highly focused laser beams to manipulate micro- and nanoscopic particles. In optical traps driven by high-energy pulses, material non-linearity…
Optical tweezers exploit light--matter interactions to trap particles ranging from single atoms to micrometer-sized eukaryotic cells. For this reason, optical tweezers are a ubiquitous tool in physics, biology, and nanotechnology. Recently,…
Polymer micro- and nano-fibers, made of organic light-emitting materials with optical gain, show interesting lasing properties. Fibers with diameters from few tens of nm to few microns can be fabricated by electrospinning, a method based on…
A nanofiber-based optical tweezer is demonstrated. Trapping is achieved by combining attractive near-field optical gradient forces with repulsive electrostatic forces. Silica-coated Fe$_2$O$_3$ nanospheres of 300 diameter are trapped as…
Photonic nanojets have been brought into attention ten years ago for potential application in ultramicroscopy, because of its sub-wavelength resolution that can enhance detection and interaction with matter. For these novel applications…
Holographic techniques significantly extend the capabilities of laser tweezing, making possible extended trapping patterns for manipulating large numbers of particles and volumes of soft matter. We describe practical methods for creating…
Optomechanical manipulation of micro and nano-scale objects with laser beams finds use in a large span of multidisciplinary applications. Auxiliary nanostructuring could substantially improve performances of classical optical tweezers by…
Strong magneto-electric coupling in two-dimensional helical materials leads to a peculiar type of topologically protected solutions -- skyrmions. Coupling between the net ferroelectric polarization and magnetization allows control of the…
Particles trapped by optical tweezers, behaving as mechanical oscillators in an optomechanical system, have found tremendous applications in various disciplines and are still arousing research interest in frontier and fundamental physics.…
Optical tweezers equipped with position detection allow for application of piconewton-scale forces and high-temporal-resolution measurements of nanometer-scale motion. While typically used for trapping microscopic objects, the optical…
Hyperbolic (or indefinite) materials have attracted significant attention due to their unique capabilities for engineering electromagnetic space and controlling light propagation. A current challenge is to find a hyperbolic material with…
Conventional optical tweezers are generated by the intensity gradient of highly focused laser beams, but the requirement of strong intensity gradient limits the tunability of optical traps. Here we show a new type of optical tweezers with…
Acoustic tweezers can manipulate microscopic objects and cells independently of the optical, magnetic and electrical properties of the objects or their medium. However, because ultrasonic waves are attenuated within few millimeters,…
Optical manipulation has attracted remarkable interest owing to its versatile and non-invasive nature. However, conventional optical trapping remains inefficient for the nanoscopic world. The emergence of plasmonics in recent years has…
Optical tweezers, which are powerful tools for trapping and manipulating particles, have been widely used in many areas. However, their potential wells are typically symmetrical, which limit their capability of optical trapping and…
We report the first demonstration that carbon nanotubes can be trapped and manipulated by optical tweezers. This observation is surprising because individual nanotubes are substantially smaller than the wavelength of light, and thus should…
The synergy of judiciously engineered nanostructures and complex topology of light creates unprecedented opportunities for tailoring light-matter interactions on the nanoscale. Electromagnetic waves can carry multiple units of angular…
We present experimental evidence of plasmonic-enhanced optical tweezers, of polystyrene beads in deionized water in the vicinity of metal-coated nanostructures. The optical tweezers operate with a continuous wave (CW) near-infrared laser.…
Current optical manipulation techniques rely on carefully engineered setups and samples. Although similar conditions are routinely met in research laboratories, it is still a challenge to manipulate microparticles when the environment is…
We develop an optical tweezers system using a single dual-mode optical fiber where mesoscopic absorbing particles can be trapped in three dimensions and manipulated employing photophoretic forces. We generate a superposition of fundamental…