Tag Archive for 'Tractor beam'

Experimental configuration and principles of optical vortex beam for discharge control and guidance: at first, microparticles are prepared and placed in an enclosed container with vertically aligned electrodes (left); an applied electric field through the container lifts the particles by electrostatic forces; some of the lifted particles cross the hollow core doughnut-shaped CW laser beam and get trapped in it; the vortex laser beam is guides particles in the mid-air: particles from a container are transported into a parallel plate chamber through a hole in one of the electrodes; in addition, particles are heated by the same laser beam thus creating a thermal channel between the electrodes that results in a subthreshold electrical breakdown; the inset shows a photograph of the experimental setup with particles trapped in the beam. Image credit: Shvedov et al., doi: 10.1038/s41467-020-19183-0.

‘Tractor’ Laser Beam Has Potential to Control Path, Direction of Lightning

Nov 17, 2020 by News Staff

An international team of researchers has proposed and demonstrated an efficient approach for triggering, trapping and guiding electrical discharges in...

Atomic chamber in which tractor beams were created. Image credit: Institute for Photonics and Advanced Sensing.

Physicists Create Tractor Beam for Atoms

Nov 2, 2018 by News Staff

Rather than sucking space ships into a space-station, a tractor beam created by University of Adelaide researcher Ashby Hilton and his colleagues pulls...

Picture of the distribution of the genetic information in an E. coli cell. Image credit: University of Bielefeld.

Optical ‘Tractor Beam’ Traps Biological Cells

Dec 28, 2016 by News Staff

Physicists in Germany have developed a novel technique for trapping biological cells with a laser beam. Using this technique, the researchers obtained...

Holograms are 3D light-fields that can be projected from a 2D surface; Asier Marzo of the University of Bristol and the Public University of Navarre and his colleagues have created acoustic holograms with shapes such as tweezers, twisters and cages that exert forces on particles to levitate and manipulate them. Image credit: Asier Marzo / Bruce Drinkwater / Sriram Subramanian.

European Researchers Create Acoustic Tractor Beam

Oct 28, 2015 by News Staff

A group of scientists from the United Kingdom and Spain have built the world’s first working acoustic tractor beam. Holograms are 3D light-fields that...

Australian National University scientists adjusting the hollow laser beam. Image credit: Stuart Hay.

Scientists Build ‘Long-Distance’ Optical Tractor Beam

Oct 21, 2014 by News Staff

A team of researchers led by Dr Vladlen Shvedov of the Australian National University’s Laser Physics Center in Canberra, Australia, has built what they...