[Originally posted on LinkedIn on 30th September 2025]
Is it possible to play tennis with light? A new paper in Science Advances shows that, with the right equipment, the answer is yes.
Using a tiny tennis ball measuring 7 micrometres in diameter, the authors bounced the ball back and forth with rackets made from light beams.
They videoed the game using a fast camera, capturing a frame every 2 ms, and recorded:
- court size: 230 micrometres
- rally: 20,400 rounds per minute
- ball trajectory: elliptical orbit of 120 micrometres
Travelling a distance the size of a human hair, this rapid game of tennis shows how fast-moving particles can be manipulated in air with a pair of parallel light beams tilted by 2°.
Why does this matter?
Controlling and moving microscopic particles with light opens a range of applications in biology, for example to grab and hold cells, or nanoengineering to build materials out of single molecules.
Playing tennis with the particle involved a set-up of light beams parallel to the ball in air. This orientation helped the ball move much faster, without losing speed to drag forces. By reaching higher speeds, much faster particle manipulation can be achieved.
Read the full paper here: https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.adx1485 from AAAS
Ali Droby, Mohammad Attrash, Hani Barhum, Nitzan Shani, Yael Roichman and Tal Carmon Optical tweezers with light aligned along the particle’s trajectory enable playing tennis with light rackets, Sci. Adv., 2025, 11, eadx1485