General Introduction to Optical Tweezers and Their Applications

It is thanks to the pioneering works of Ashkin and co-workers

(Ashkin, 1970; Ashkin and Dziedzic, 1971; Ashkin et al., 1986) that

optical tweezers (OT) have become an invaluable tool for a myriad

of studies throughout the natural sciences. Indeed, the ability of manipulating micron-sized objects by means of a highly-focussed

laser beam have proved to be an extraordinary tool for a great

number of applications, as reviewed, for instance, in (Curtis et al.,

2002; Grier, 2003; Moffitt et al., 2008; Molloy and Padgett, 2002;

Novotny et al., 1997; Svoboda and Block, 1994a).