Abstract
Optical trapping is a technique that uses focused laser light to confine, manipulate, and apply optical forces to a variety of microscopic objects including dielectric, metallic, and biological samples. In this paper, we review the basic principles of optical trapping and summarize some of the key results derived from ray-optic and wave-optic theories for trapping forces and their parametric dependence. The application of these theories to the study of low-index microparticles and different trapping geometries are also described.
