ABSTRACT

In 1970, a pap er t itled “Acceleration a nd t rapping o f pa rticles b y r adiation p ressure,” w ritten b y Arthur Ashkin (1970), started the experimental activity on optical trapping. e possibility of exerting mechanical forces by photon, through radiation pressure and angular momentum exchange, was well recognized theoretically and experimentally since the beginning of modern optics and the discovery of M axwell e quations. Nevertheless, t he i nterest a round t his phenomenon rem ained l imited due to the weakness of such forces when their e ects were considered on macroscopic objects. It was the experimental s kill a nd t he s cienti c awareness o f A shkin t hat brought t he opt ical t rapping f rom a

phenomenon of unpractical interest into the realm of a mature and relevant cross-disciplinary research eld, on par with biology, physics, and material science. Since 1970, a s trong activity was developed worldwide whose wideness and importance can be appreciated by reading the review paper written by Ashkin (2000).