Optical tweezers

The Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded to Arthur Ashkin in 2018 “for groundbreaking inventions in laser physics.” This topic is near and dear to my heart as it employs and depicts radiation pressure, the fundamental mechanism of optomechanics which I explored in my Doctoral studies, in a tangible manner and enables many applications in biology. Our group was able to write an article for the Times of Malta. The article lays out the principle of radiation pressure and the title picture is a wonderful reenactment of the Ashkin’s explanation (See Fig. 2 here) for the optical gradient force.