English

A computational tool to characterize particle tracking measurements in optical tweezers

Instrumentation and Detectors 2021-05-27 v1 Optics

Abstract

Here we present a computational tool for optical tweezers which calculates the particle tracking signal measured with a quadrant detector and the shot-noise limit to position resolution. The tool is a piece of Matlab code which functions within the freely available Optical Tweezers Toolbox. It allows the measurements performed in most optical tweezers experiments to be theoretically characterized in a fast and easy manner. The code supports particles with arbitrary size, any optical fields and any combination of objective and condenser, and performs a full vector calculation of the relevant fields. Example calculations are presented which show the tracking signals for different particles, and the shot noise limit to position sensitivity as a function of the effective condenser NA.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2105.12330,
  title  = {A computational tool to characterize particle tracking measurements in optical tweezers},
  author = {Michael A. Taylor and Warwick P. Bowen},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2105.12330},
  year   = {2021}
}