OT and HOT: Manipulation of light on the micro-scale

Synopsis

Optical tweezers (OT) use light to hold or manipulate small objects such as biological molecules or living cells. In this talk, I will describe the mechanism and some applications of this powerful tool. I will discuss a new branch of the field called holographic optical tweezers (HOT). The HOT employs a computer-based diffractive optical element (DOE) to split a single collimated laser beam into separate beams. Each of these beams is then focused by a strongly converging lens into an optical tweezer configuration. This gives us the ability to organize materials into 3D structures to generate a completely new category of fabrication techniques.