Bell Labs Museum Showcase - Optical Tweezers

The Nokia Bell Labs Showcase Museum is at Murray Hill, New Jersey; and I am one of the tour guides. In this Episode of the Bell Labs Showcase Tours, I’ll describe the Nobel Prize winning idea of Optical Tweezers from Arthur Ashkin. Ashkin developed what he called a “single-beam gradient force trap” (what we now call optical tweezers) which used lasers to hold microscopic particles stable in three dimensions. In 2018, Ashkin was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics for its invention. Optical Tweezers use focused laser beams to hold and move microscopic and sub-microscopic objects like atoms, nano-particles and droplets, just like tweezers. If the object is held in air or a vacuum, it is called optical levitation. Optical tweezers are used in biology and medicine to grab single bacterium, cells, or DNA molecules. Nano-engineering and nano-chemistry use them to study and build materials from single molecules. Quantum optics and quantum opto-mechanics use them to study the interaction of single particles with light. Bell Labs has been at the heart of many ground-breaking inventions including Sound Movies, Digital Imaging, Information Sciences, Radio Astronomy, Lasers, Satellite Communications, Integrated Circuits, and the Transistor which has resulted in 10 Nobel Prizes. Be sure to check out my other Bell Labs Showcase Museum tour videos.
Enjoy! -Ben