Optical Tweezers as Scientific Tools: Applications and Techniques

Dear Colleagues,

Over the past three decades, optical tweezers have become a key scientific instrument in many research fields, spanning from biology and medicine to quantum physics with ultra-cold atoms and opto-mechanics. Current state-of-the-art systems used to generate and control optical tweezers range from custom research-grade implementations to full turn-key commercial devices. Many novel approaches have been developed to improve the performance and broaden the applicability of these optical tools, such as multiplexing the number of beams, leveraging non-Gaussian wavefronts and dynamically controlling their properties, such as intensity, position and shape. Although several of these advancements have been well presented and discussed through scientific publications and reports, specialized knowledge from the user side is still required to properly leverage them to conduct an experiment of interest.

With this Special Issue, we are aiming to reduce the gap between optical tweezer developers and users. Our aim is to cover the whole range of their applications, including industrial use-cases, and highlight the methods and technical requirements and protocols that must be implemented to achieve the best performances and accurate results. The potential topics of this Special Issue include, but are not limited to, the following:

• Any application where particles are trapped or manipulated;
• Applications in biology and medicine;
• Applications in biophysics;
• Applications in ultra-cold atom physics;
• Applications in quantum optics and optomechanics;
• Engineering and industrial uses;
• Measurement techniques that involve or benefit from optical tweezers, including experimental improvements of previous realizations;
• Active and passive approaches to generate optical tweezers;
• Methods to statically or dynamically control their position, shape, intensity, trajectory, polarization, etc.;
• Methods to multiplex the number of beams;
• Open and closed loop approaches to control the beam point spread function;
• Laser beam modes that differ from the Gaussian modes, including their realization and application.

Dr. Vladislav Gavryusev
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Photonics is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• optical tweezer
• optical trap
• dipole trap
• micro-manipulation
• particle trapping and manipulation
• single-particle transportation
• cell and atom sorting
• optical multiplexing
• spatial light modulator
• acousto-optical deflector
• beam-shaping
• point spread function optimization