Arthur Ashkin Research Articles

Optical trapping with holographically structured light for single-cell studies.

A groundbreaking work in 1970 by Arthur Ashkin paved the way for developing various optical trapping techniques. Optical tweezers have become an established method for the manipulation of biological objects, due to their noninvasiveness and precise controllability. Recent innovations are accelerating and now enable single-cell manipulation through holographic light structuring. In this review, we provide an overview of recent advances in optical tweezer techniques for studies at the individual cell level. Our review focuses on holographic optical tweezers that utilize active spatial light modulators to noninvasively manipulate live cells. The versatility of the technology has led to valuable integrations with microscopy, microfluidics, and biotechnological techniques for various single-cell studies. We aim to recapitulate the basic principles of holographic optical tweezers, highlight trends in their biophysical applications, and discuss challenges and future prospects.

When Optical Tweezers Met Biology

Arthur Ashkin’s longtime fascination with light pressure sparked new insights into the mechanical forces that govern biological molecules and cells.

Utilization of Optical Tweezer Nanotechnology in Membrane Interaction Studies

Optical tweezers have been a fixture of microscopic cell manipulation since the 1990s. Arthur Ashkin’s seminal work has led to the advancement of optical tweezers as an effective tool for assay development in the fields of physics and nanotechnology. As an advanced application of cell manipulation, optical tweezers have facilitated the study of a multitude of cellular and molecular interactions within the greater field of nanotechnology. In the three decades since the optical tweezers’ rise to prominence, different and versatile assays have emerged that further explore the biochemical pathways integral for cell proliferation and communication. The most critical organelle implicated in the communication and protection of single cells includes the plasma membrane. In the past three decades, novel assays have emerged which examine the plasma membrane’s role in cell-to-cell interaction and the specific protein components that serve integral membrane functions for the cell as a whole. To further understand the extent to which optical tweezers have evolved as a critical tool for cellular membrane assessment within the field of nanotechnology, the various novel assays, including pulling, indentation, and stretching assays, will be reviewed in the current research sector.

Nano-Optical Tweezers: Methods and Applications for Trapping Single Molecules and Nanoparticles.

Optical tweezers were developed in 1970 by Arthur Ashkin as a tool for the manipulation of micron-sized particles. Ashkin's original design was then adapted for a variety of purposes, such as trapping and manipulation of biological materials[1] and the laser cooling of atoms.[2,3] More recent development has led to nano-optical tweezers, for trapping particles on the scale of only a few nanometers, and holographic tweezers, which allow for dynamic control of multiple traps in real-time. These alternatives to conventional optical tweezers have made it possible to trap single molecules and to perform a variety of studies on them. Presented here is a review of recent developments in nano-optical tweezers and their current and future applications.

Optical tweezers — from calibration to applications: a tutorial

Since their invention in 1986 by Arthur Ashkin and colleagues, optical tweezers have become an essential tool in several fields of physics, spectroscopy, biology, nanotechnology, and thermodynamics. In this tutorial, we provide a primer on how to calibrate optical tweezers and how to use them for advanced applications. After a brief general introduction on optical tweezers, we focus on describing and comparing the various available calibration techniques. Then, we discuss some cutting-edge applications of optical tweezers in a liquid medium, namely, to study single-molecule and single-cell mechanics, microrheology, colloidal interactions, statistical physics, and transport phenomena. Finally, we consider optical tweezers in vacuum, where the absence of a viscous medium offers vastly different dynamics and presents new challenges. We conclude with some perspectives for the field and the future applications of optical tweezers. This tutorial provides both a step-by-step guide ideal for non-specialists entering the field and a comprehensive manual of advanced techniques useful for expert practitioners. All of the examples are complemented by the sample data and software necessary to reproduce them.

In memory of Arthur Ashkin

Radiation pressure exerted by light was a lifelong passion for Arthur Ashkin. He foresaw that light pressure could do useful work and invented the optical tweezers that can trap microscopic objects, from small ‘living things’ down to individual atoms.

Arthur Ashkin: Father of the optical tweezers

The father of the optical tweezers, Arthur Ashkin, passed away peacefully at his home in Rumson, NJ, on September 21, 2020, at the age of 98, two years after being awarded the 2018 Physics Nobel Prize. Arthur Ashkin, in his backyard, looking through a magnifying glass. Image credit: Daniel Ashkin (photographer). From right to left: Arthur Ashkin, Steven Chu, and John Bjorkholm in 1986, around the time of the first demonstration of atom trapping. Reused with permission of Nokia Corporation and AT&T Archives. Arthur Ashkin in his homemade laboratory in his basement in November 2018. Arthur Ashkin was born in Brooklyn, NY, on September 2, 1922, the son of humble eastern European Jewish immigrants. Arthur’s father, Isador, was an orphan from Odessa, then part of Russia, while his mother, Anna, was from the province of Galicia, then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Isador immigrated to the United States in 1910, shortly before his nineteenth birthday. Upon his arrival at Ellis Island, his surname, Ashkenasy, was Americanized to Ashkin. Having trained as a dental technician in the orphanage where he was raised, Isador established his own dental laboratory on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, specializing in dental prostheses. Anna, who worked briefly as a secretary in Red Hook, Brooklyn, became a homemaker, raising Arthur and his siblings in Flatbush, Brooklyn. Arthur had three siblings, a younger sister, Ruth, an elder brother, Julius, and the first-born, Gertrude, who died at a young age. Ruth studied Greek and Latin at The City College of New York and became an esteemed teacher in the New York City elementary school system. Julius became a physicist. He was an exceptionally gifted student who graduated early and became a close collaborator with many leading physicists of the time, including Richard Feynman, Edward Teller, and Hans Bethe. … [↵][1]1Email: rene.essiambre{at}nokia-bell-labs.com. [1]: #xref-corresp-1-1

Optical manipulation: a step change for biomedical science

The transfer of optical momentum can exert miniscule but important forces on biological specimens. This area of optical manipulation has been thriving for over 50 years. Its importance was recognised by the award of half of the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2018 to Arthur Ashkin for the use of a single focused light beam for manipulation, namely optical tweezers. This article reviews the basic physics of trapping and gives an overview of the basic premise of the field. We particularly focus upon its importance and impact on the biomedical sciences.

Interdisciplinary Research of Physics in Biological Field Leads the Nobel Prize 2018

The Nobel Prize in Physics 2018 was awarded jointly to Arthur Ashkin, Gerard Mourou and Donna Strickland for giving new beam of light in the field of laser physics. Unravelling new mechanical properties of biological molecule has made an interdisciplinary approach with physics creating significant insight into solving devil diseases.

Gradient, scattering and other kinds of longitudinal optical forces exerted by off-axis Bessel beams in the Rayleigh regime in the framework of generalized Lorenz-Mie theory

After Arthur Ashkin’s pioneering work in optical levitation and manipulation, the study of optical forces exerted by laser beams on particles has become an active field of research. The present paper is a contribution to this issue. The interest of Bessel beams is that their intensity does not have any longitudinal gradient along the direction of propagation leading to a trivial separation between gradient and scattering forces. Beside the classical gradient and scattering forces, we shall however exhibit a new kind of optical forces associated with the existence of non zero axicon angles.

From Far-Field to Near-Field Micro- and Nanoparticle Optical Trapping

Optical tweezers are a very well-established technique that have developed into a standard tool for trapping and manipulating micron and submicron particles with great success in the last decades. Although the nature of light enforces restrictions on the minimum particle size that can be efficiently trapped due to Abbe’s diffraction limit, scientists have managed to overcome this problem by engineering new devices that exploit near-field effects. Nowadays, metallic nanostructures can be fabricated which, under laser illumination, produce a secondary plasmonic field that does not suffer from the diffraction limit. This advance offers a great improvement in nanoparticle trapping, as it relaxes the trapping requirements compared to conventional optical tweezers although problems may arise due to thermal heating of the metallic nanostructures. This could hinder efficient trapping and damage the trapped object. In this work, we review the fundamentals of conventional optical tweezers, the so-called plasmonic tweezers, and related phenomena. Starting from the conception of the idea by Arthur Ashkin until recent improvements and applications, we present the principles of these techniques along with their limitations. Emphasis in this review is on the successive improvements of the techniques and the innovative aspects that have been devised to overcome some of the main challenges.

The 2018 Nobel Prize in Physics: optical tweezers and chirped pulse amplification.

The 2018 Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded to Arthur Ashkin (prize share ½), Gérard Mourou (prize share ¼), and Donna Strickland (prize share ¼) for "groundbreaking inventions in the field of laser physics." This feature article summarizes the development of "optical tweezers and their application to biological systems" by Arthur Ashkin, as well as the Mourou/Strickland method of "generating high-intensity, ultrashort optical pulses" known as chirped pulse amplification. Further developments are also briefly discussed.

Analytical calculation of optical forces on spherical particles in optical tweezers: tutorial

Arthur Ashkin was awarded the 2018 Nobel prize in physics for the invention of optical tweezers. Since the first publication in 1986 Optical Tweezers have been used as a tool to measure forces and rheological properties of microscopic systems. For the calibration of these measurements, the knowledge of the forces is fundamental. However, it is still common to deduce the optical forces from assumptions based on the particle size with respect to the trapping laser wavelength. This show the necessity to develop a complete and accurate electromagnetic model that does not depend on early approximations of the force model. Furthermore, the model we developed has several advantages, such as morphology--dependent resonances, size dependence for large spheres, and multipole effects from smaller particles, just to name a few. In this tutorial, we review and discuss the physical modeling of optical forces in optical tweezers, which are the resultant forces exerted by a trapping beam on a sphere of any size and composition.

Review of optical tweezers in vacuum

As a versatile tool for trapping and manipulating neutral particles, optical tweezers have been studied in a broad range of fields such as molecular biology, nanotechnology, and experimentally physics since Arthur Ashkin pioneered the field in the early 1970s. By levitating the “sensor” with a laser beam instead of adhering it to solid components, excellent environmental decoupling is achieved. Furthermore, unlike levitating particles in liquid or air, optical tweezers operating in vacuum are isolated from environmental thermal noise, thus eliminating the primary source of dissipation present for most inertial sensors. This attracted great attention in both fundamental and applied physics. In this paper we review the history and the basic concepts of optical tweezers in vacuum and provide an overall understanding of the field.

An optical tweezer phonon laser

Phonon lasers are mechanical analogues of the ubiquitous optical laser and have been realized in a variety of contexts1–12. However, no such demonstration exists for mesoscopic levitated optomechanical systems, which are emerging as important platforms for conducting fundamental tests of quantum mechanics13–15 and gravity16, as well as for developing sensing modalities that couple mechanical motion to electron spin17–20 and charge21. Inspired by the pioneering work of Arthur Ashkin on optical tweezers22,23, we introduce a mesoscopic, frequency-tunable phonon laser based on the centre-of-mass oscillation of a silica nanosphere levitated in an optical tweezer under vacuum. Unlike previous levitated realizations, our scheme is general enough to be used on single electrons, liquid droplets or even small biological organisms24. Our device thus provides a pathway for a coherent source of phonons on the mesoscale that can be applied to both fundamental problems in quantum mechanics as well as tasks of precision metrology25–27. A phonon laser based on an optically levitated silica nanosphere is demonstrated. A lasing threshold—a phase transition from Brownian motion to coherent oscillation—is observed when the modulation depth of the trapping beam power is increased.

The Power of Light: Nobel Prize in Physics 2018.

The 2018 Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded to three scientists in the field of laser science: Dr. Arthur Ashkin for his invention of the optical tweezers and their application to biological systems, and Dr. Gérard Mourou and Dr. Donna Strickland for their method of generating high-intensity, ultrashort optical pulses. The awards integrate the far reaches of time and intensity scales in laser technologies, from the extremely high-intensity chirped pulse lasers (by Mourou and Strickland) to the ultralow-power beams (by Ashkin) that are capable of handling delicate biological objects and molecules [1], [2]. The IEEE family is indeed delighted to see two of its Life Fellows, Arthur Ashkin and Gérard Mourou, as co-recipients of the awards from the Royal Swedish Academy of Science. Mourou is a past recipient of the IEEE Photonics Quantum Electronics Award and the IEEE David Sarnoff Award. Strickland has been an active author in the IEEE Journal of Quantum Electronics and IEEE Journal of Selected Topics in Quantum Electronics.

Manipulating matter with light

Arthur Ashkin, with his discovery of the optical tweezers, has made possible the dream of science fiction to manipulate matter with light. The optical tweezers have opened up an extremely interesting field of science, not yet exhausted, where questions of fundamental physics intertwine with intriguing investigations of biological systems at level of single macromolecule or cell.

Recent Progress in Two-Dimensional Nanomaterials for Laser Protection

The Nobel Prize in Physics 2018, “For groundbreaking inventions in the field of laser physics”, went to Arthur Ashkin and Gérard Mourou and Donna Strickland. Their inventions have revolutionized laser physics and greatly promoted the development of laser instruments, which have penetrated into many aspects of people’s daily lives. However, for the purpose of protecting human eyes or optical instruments from being damaged by both pulsed and continuous wave laser radiation, the research on laser protective materials is of particular significance. Due to the intriguing and outstanding physical, chemical, and structural properties, two-dimensional (2D) nanomaterials have been extensively studied as optical limiting (OL) materials owing to their broadband nonlinear optical (NLO) response and fast carrier relaxation dynamics that are important for reducing the laser intensity. This review systematically describes the OL mechanisms and the recent progress in 2D nanomaterials for laser protection.

Analysis for Science Librarians of the 2018 Nobel Prize in Physics: Using Light as a Tool for New Discoveries

ABSTRACT The 2018 Nobel Prize in Physics went to Arthur Ashkin, Donna Strickland, and Gérard Mourou for important advances in how lasers are used. Ashkin is the pioneer behind radiation pressure-induced optical levitation and trapping, an important technique in physics, chemistry, and biology. Strickland and Mourou invented chirped pulse amplification, which has led to a revolution in how high-energy pulsed lasers can be used everywhere from the laboratory to the hospital. This paper describes the science behind the prize and provides biographical profiles for the new laureates, most notably a citation analysis using Web of Science, Scopus data, and network graph tools.

Nobel Prize in Physics – 2018

On Tuesday, 02 October 2018, Arthur Ashkin of the United States, who pioneered a way of using light to manipulate physical objects, shared the first half of the 2018 Nobel Prize in Physics. The second half was divided equally between Gerard Mourou of France and Donna Strickland of Canada for their method of generating high-intensity, ultra-short optical pulses. With this announcement, Donna Strickland, who was awarded the Nobel for herwork as a PhD student with GerardMourou, became the third woman to have ever won the Physics Nobel Prize, and the 96-year-old Arthur Ashkin who was awarded for his work on optical tweezers and their application to biological systems, became the oldest Nobel Prize winner. According to Nobel.org, the practical applications leading to the Prize in 2018 are tools made of light that have revolutionised laser physics–a discipline which in turn is represented by generations of advancements and not just a single example of brilliant work.