Not Pulling Your Leg: Tractor Beams May Be Possible

Not Pulling Your Leg: Tractor Beams May Be Possible: The tractor beam would work in a new way. In this case, the light would pull an object toward the source of the beam even though the beam has the same intensity all along its length. The trick is to use a special type of laser beam. In an ordinary beam, each photon moves in the direction of the beam, so when a photon bounces directly back from an object, it imparts the largest possible push. However, physicists can generate a beam by overlapping light waves that make an angle relative to the desired direction (see figure). The overlapping waves produce a forward-moving beam known as a Bessel beam whose intensity remains constant along its length. But each photon is now moving at an angle relative to the beam. So when one bounces off an object, it exerts a smaller forward push.

Nevertheless, the beam is still pushing, and to overcome that push, physicists need to rely on another bit of physics. Again, the light will polarize the material in the object electrically and magnetically. The polarized object will then radiate and redirect the light. By adjusting the material properties of the object and the polarizations and synchronization of the individual light waves in the beam, physicists can make the object radiate more light forward along the beam than backward toward its source. The radiated light then acts like a reverse thruster, overcoming the already-reduced forward push of the beam and driving the object back toward its source.