Tractor Beams Revisited

Stephen R. Wilk

Apart from micro-scale optical tweezers, tractor beams have been considered nothing more than the stuff of sci-fi fantasy. Time to think again …

 

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All things change, and the non-existence of tractor beams appears to be one of them. When I wrote “The Pull of the Tractor Beam,” which was published in the November 2009 Optics & Photonics News, I stated that tractor beams were imaginary and that no good theory existed to support them.

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