Optical Manipulations in Biological Science and Emerging Optics

Dear Colleagues,

I am very pleased to introduce this Special Issue on “Optical Manipulations in Biological Science and Emerging Optics.”

The past four decades have witnessed the burgeoning and glowing development of optical manipulations ever since its gorgeous debut in the 1970s, when the pioneer Dr. Arthur Ashkin ingeniously utilized the optical radiation pressure to ‘push’ particles. A few years later, in the 1980s, Dr. Ashkin demonstrated the first optical trapping using the well-known optical gradient force. Since then, a vast amount of research has emerged to apply optical tweezers in biological science, including bioparticle manipulation in live animals, DNA stretching, molecule interactions and probing, neuron growth guiding, etc. With the wide use optical tweezers in biology to investigate the machinery of life, Dr. Ashkin was awarded one half of the Nobel Prize in Physics 2018. Another major category of optical manipulation is atom cooling, which enables many possibilities in quantum mechanics and quantum information, thus consequently wining the Nobel Prize in Physics 1997.

Recently, the optical manipulation has been rapidly moved forward with the development of advanced photonics to serve as the testbed for new optical phenomena such as spin-orbit interactions, transverse spin, material chirality, etc. It also enables the intriguing, almost fantastical moving by the so called “optical pulling force” and “optical lateral force”, as well as other manifold dynamics in structured light beams. The forces and torques can also be significantly enhanced by the emergence of extraordinary multipoles. More and more fascinating demonstrations continue to take place in conventional and quantum regimes.

The Special Issue of Micromachines is devoted to the recent advances of optical manipulations in biological science and emerging optics. Research papers, short communications, and review articles which focus on any biology-related optical manipulations and the demonstration of interesting light-matter interactions are warmly welcomed.

Anticipated topics include, but are not limited to, the following:

• High-speed, high-throughput sorting of bioparticles;
• Rotation and assembly of rod-shaped particles;
• Optical manipulations for the single-cell detection, viral studies, and bioimaging;
• Manipulation and application of upconversion particles;
• Levitated particles in extreme systems;
• Non-Hermitian physics in optical manipulations;
• Multipole enhanced or suppressed optical forces;
• Optical pulling and lateral forces;
• Spin-orbit interactions;
• Optical manipulation using special structured beams;
• Optical forces in bound states in the continuum and nonlinear systems.

We look forward to your exciting contributions.

Prof. Dr. Manuel Nieto-Vesperinas
Prof. Dr. Pin-Chieh Wu
Prof. Dr. Yuzhi Shi
Guest Editors

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