Agradecimentos: O M M and G V acknowledge support from the MSCA-ITN-ETN project ActiveMatter sponsored by the European Commission (Horizon 2020, Project No. 812780). O M M acknowledges support from the Agreement ASI-INAF n. 2018-16-HH.0, Project ‘SPACE Tweezers’. H R-D acknowledges support under the Australian Research Council’s Discovery Projects funding scheme (Project Number DP180101002) and the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Engineered Quantum Systems (EQUS, CE170100009). The authors acknowledge support from the Australian Research Council Discovery Project DP180101002 and from the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Engineered Quantum Systems (EQUS,385 CE170100009). I would like to acknowledge Sylvain Gigan and Giovanni Volpe for critical reading and fruitful discussions on the future of the technique. This work was supported by OIST Graduate University and the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS) Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (C) Grant Number 19K05316, Grant-in-Aid for JSPS Fellows Grant Number 18F1836, and an International Research Fellowship (Standard) P18367. This work is partially supported by Bogaziçi University Research Fund. The Start-Up Project 21B03SUP3 awarded to P E. F K acknowledges support from the Novo Nordisk Foundation (Grant No. NNF20OC0061673). This work was funded by the Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation. The present work has been supported by the Spanish Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación (MELODIA PGC2018-095777-B-C-22), the UAM-CAM Project (SI1/PJI/2019-00052), and through the ‘María de Maeztu’ Programme for Units of Excellence in R&D (CEX2018-000805-M). A F acknowledges the National Institute of Photonics (INFo) and CNPq. C L C acknowledges the CNPq Grant (312049/2014-5); ‘Física do Petróleo em Meios Porosos’, PETROBRAS-UFC (2016/00328-4) and F020/WIPPS II—Simulação numérica de invasão de água em poços produtores", PETROGAL-UFC. We acknowledge support by the Agreement ASI-INAF n. 2018-16-HH.0, Project ‘SPACE Tweezers’. We thank Ashley L Nord for useful comments. This work is supported by the ANR HiRes-PFM project Grant ANR-20-CE42-0005-01 of the French Agence Nationale de la Recherche. The CBS is a member of the France-BioImaging (FBI) and the French Infrastructure for Integrated Structural Biology (FRISBI), two national infrastructures supported by the French National Research Agency (ANR-10-INBS-04-01 and ANR-10-INBS-05, respectively). This material is in part based upon work supported by the Air Force Office of Scientific Research under Award Number FA9550-17-1-0397. It was also supported by the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Engineered Quantum Systems (EQUS, CE170100009). W P B acknowledges contributions to the figures from Dr Lars Madsen and Alex Terrason. We thank the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras, India for their seed and initiation grants. This work was also supported by the DBT/Wellcome Trust India Alliance Fellowship IA/I/20/1/504900 awarded to Basudev Roy. The authors acknowledge support from the Austrian Science Fund (FWF Projects P29936-N36 and F6806-N36). A V A acknowledges financial support from UNAM-DGAPA-PAPIIT-IN111919. I acknowledge support from H2020 European Research Council (ERC) starting Grant complex swimmers (Grant No. 677511). This work was supported by the European Research Council ERC-Consolidator Grant PolarizeMe (771201) and by the DFG under Germany’s Excellence Strategy (EXC 2067/1-390729940). The authors would like to acknowledge G Zanchetta, V Vitali, G Nava, T Bellini, F Bragheri, R Osellame, P Paié, and A Crespi who collaborated with the authors for the achievement of the results described in this section. This work was funded in part by the Australian Research Council (ARC) Centre of Excellence for Engineered Quantum Systems (CE110001013) and through an ARC Discovery Project Grant (DP170103010). C L is a Sydney Quantum Academy (SQA) Fellow and acknowledges support through the SQA. This work is supported by an NSERC (Canada) Discovery Grant RGPIN-2017-03830. Financial support from the Swedish Research Council (2019-02376) is acknowledged. The authors acknowledge funding from the UK Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EP/P030017/1). T L is supported by the Office of Naval Research under Grant No. N00014-18-1-2371, and NSF under Grant No. PHY-2110591. This work has been partially supported by the Czech Academy of Sciences Praemium Academiae and Czech Science Foundation (21-19245K). I wish to acknowledge Icrea Academia prizes 2018 (Catalan Government) and the Spanish Research Council Grant No. PID2019-111148GB-I00 for financial support. This work is partly supported by the Israeli Science Foundation, Grant Nos. 998/17 and 385/21, and partly by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (Grant Agreement No. 101002392). The authors acknowledge Matthias Rueschenbaum for his help with the pictures’ preparation and Thorsten Ackemann and Giuseppe Baio for valuable discussions during the project realization. This work was funded by the European Union Horizon 2020 program (ColOpt ITN 721465); the German Research Foundation (DFG)—Project-ID 433682494—SFB 1459; and the University of Muenster. G V P K acknowledges a Swarnajayanti fellowship Grant (DST/SJF/PSA02/2017-18) from DST, India. We acknowledge the projects IFREMER - MERLIN-MICROPLASTIQUE (convention 17/1212947B), Joint Bilateral Agreement CNR/The Czech Academy of Sciences, COST action CA20101 PRIORITY, European Union MSCA-ITN-ETN project ActiveMatter (No. 812780), European Union (NextGeneration EU) MUR-PNRR projects PE0000023-NQSTI and SAMOTHRACE (ECS00000022) for supporting this work. This work was supported by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program under Grant Agreement No. 871124 Laserlab-Europe. A.V. Kashchuk was supported by the Human Frontier Science Program Cross-Disciplinary Fellowship LT008/2020-C. L P acknowledges support from a Technology Touching Lives grant funded through EPSRC/BBSRC/MRC (Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council/Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council/Medical Research Council) joint Grants EP/R03 5563/1, EP/R035156/1 and EP/R035067/1. PHJ acknowledges financial contribution from the MSCA-ITN-ETN project ActiveMatter sponsored by the European Commission (Horizon 2020, Project Number 812780). K B S acknowledges support from the Novo Nordisk Foundation (Grant No. NNF20OC0061673) and Independent Research Fund Denmark (Grant No. 0135-00142B). Y F B acknowledges support from the Novo Nordisk Foundation (Grant No. NNF20OC0061176). L B O acknowledges support from the Danish National Research Foundation (Grant No. DNRF116). Many thanks to the Beckman Laser Institute and the Airforce office for scientific research (FA9550-20-1-0052) for funding this work, and to Toyohiko Yamauchi and Micheal Berns for useful discussions on this topic over the years. C B S acknowledges support from the European Commission through the MSCA-ITN ‘DeLiver’ (Grant Agreement No. 766181) and from the Swedish Foundation for Strategic Research (ITM17-0384). A C D L acknowledges the financial support by the Italian Association for Cancer Research (AIRC) IG Grant No. 21420 ‘Correlative optical microscopies for cancer imaging’. We acknowledge support from the MSCA-ITN-ETN project ActiveMatter sponsored by the European Commission (Horizon 2020, Project No. 812780), by the Agreement ASI-INAF n. 2018-16-HH.0, Project ‘SPACE Tweezers’, and by the European Union (NextGeneration EU), through the MUR-PNRR project SAMOTHRACE (ECS00000022) and PNRR MUR project PE0000023-NQSTI. This research was supported by NASA, the United States of America Innovative Advanced Concepts Program (NIAC), Grants 80NSSC18K0867 and 80NSSC19K0975. I am grateful to Les Johnson and Andy Heaton (NASA Marshall Space Flight Center) for discussions on solar sailing Ver menos

Abstract: Optical tweezers are tools made of light that enable contactless pushing, trapping, and manipulation of objects, ranging from atoms to space light sails. Since the pioneering work by Arthur Ashkin in the 1970s, optical tweezers have evolved into sophisticated instruments and have been employed in a broad range of applications in the life sciences, physics, and engineering. These include accurate force and torque measurement at the femtonewton level, microrheology of complex fluids, single micro- and nano-particle spectroscopy, single-cell analysis, and statistical-physics experiments. This roadmap provides insights into current investigations involving optical forces and optical tweezers from their theoretical foundations to designs and setups. It also offers perspectives for applications to a wide range of research fields, from biophysics to space exploration Ver menos