David McGloin

TL;DR: In this article, the theoretical foundation of the Bessel beam is described and various experiments that make use of Bessel beams are discussed: these cover a wide range of fields including non-linear optics, where the intense central core of the bessel beam has attracted interest; short pulse non-diffracting fields; atom optics, and optical manipulation where the reconstruction properties of the beam enable new effects to be observed that cannot be seen with Gaussian beams.

TL;DR: Bessel beams do not diverge and, furthermore, if part of the beam is obstructed or distorted the beam reconstructs itself after a characteristic propagation distance, which may be utilized within optical tweezers to trap particles in multiple, spatially separated sample cells with a single beam.

TL;DR: It is demonstrated that optical spin-to-orbital angular momentum conversion can occur in a homogeneous and isotropic medium and that the orbital rotation speeds of trapped particles are altered because of this conversion as predicted by theory.

TL;DR: The radial dependence of the observations of the spinning and orbital motion of a microscopic particle trapped within a multiringed light beam is found to be in close agreement with the accepted theory.

TL;DR: The self-healing properties of interfering Bessel beams allow the simultaneous manipulation and rotation of particles in spatially separated sample cells in optical tweezers and rotators.