2018 Nobel Prize in Physics: Electrodynamic Forces and Optical Tweezers | Colloquia 2018

2018 Nobel Prize in Physics: Electrodynamic Forces and Optical Tweezers. Its relevance in Biosciences

Manuel Nieto Vesperinas, ICMM-CSIC and Ricardo Arias, IMDEA Nanociencia. 05 November 2018

Arthur Ashkin, formerly at Bell Labs in New Jersey, Gérard Mourou from École Polytechnique in France and the University of Michigan, and Donna Strickland from the University of Waterloo in Canada, have been awarded the 2018 Nobel Prize in Physics “for groundbreaking inventions in the field of laser physics”.

The Royal Swedish Academy has honored Ashkin for inventing the optical tweezers, that trap and manipulate particles and living cells. This was a work done in the 1970s and 1980s, when he established a way to taming the radiation pressure of laser beams by discovering that it not only pushes small objects, but it also may confine them enabling their manipulation. He expanded these studies from latex beads to viruses, DNA and other biological pecimens, so that nowadays this tachnique constitutes a standard tool in biosciences and photonics.

On the other hand, Mourou and Strickland developed chirped pulse amplification, by which a laser pulse is stretched, amplified, and then compressed to increase its power. This has given rise to ultrafast, high-intensity lasers, paving the way to novel less invasive and accurate surgical tools, as well as to advances in data storage, materials manufacturing, and the study of femtosecond- and even attosecond-duration phenomena.

This talk will focus on the discovery of optical tweezers, addressing their evolution to constitute nowadays standard manipulation techniques in biological studies, as well as the progress and present knowledge of the optical forces which are beneath micro and nano-object manipulation.