Tractor beam created: the ‘holy grail for laser physicists’

[Robert]

Guardian today:

Laser physicists have built a reversible tractor beam and are using it to retrieve tiny particles.

It has nowhere near the pulling power of tractor beams envisaged in science fiction, but the first long-distance optical tractor beam has so far moved particles one fifth of a millimetre in diameter a distance of up to 20cm.

That’s about 100 times further than previous experiments, says Wieslaw Krolikowski of Australian National University.

http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/oct/20/optical-tractor-beam-laser-physicists