A practical guide to optical tweezers
This chapter provides a brief review of the physical principles behind the method of trapping microscopic dielectric particles by focused laser light (optical tweezers) and then discusses some of the practical possibilities and limitations encountered when using optical tweezers. Since its invention in the 1980s, the use of optical tweezers has spread far in biology and also in physics and materials science. This chapter is not intended as a review of applications, but rather to highlight some of the technical issues one needs to consider in applications. Several extensive reviews of optical tweezers and experimental uses have been published (Svoboda and Block 1994, Ashkin 1997, Sheetz 1997) and an exhaustive literature overview is available (Lang and Block 2003).