Photon-efficient optical tweezers via wavefront shaping
Abstract
Optical tweezers enable non-contact trapping of micro-scale objects using light. Despite their widespread use, it is currently not known how tightly it is possible to three-dimensionally trap micro-particles with a given photon budget. Reaching this elusive limit would enable maximally-stiff particle trapping for precision measurements on the nanoscale, and photon-efficient tweezing of light-sensitive objects. Here we solve this problem by customising a trapping light field to suit a specific particle, with the aim of simultaneously optimising trap stiffness in all three dimensions. Initially taking a theoretical approach, we develop an efficient multi-parameter optimisation routine to design bespoke optical traps for a wide range of micro-particles. We show that the confinement volume of micro-spheres held in these sculpted traps can be reduced by one-to-two orders-of-magnitude in comparison to a conventional optical tweezer of the same power. We go on to conduct proof-of-principle experiments, and use a wavefront shaping inspired strategy to suppress the Brownian fluctuations of optically trapped micro-spheres in every direction concurrently, thus demonstrating order-of-magnitude reductions in their confinement volumes. Our work paves the way towards the fundamental limits of optical control over the mesoscopic realm.
Cite
@article{arxiv.2304.12848,
title = {Photon-efficient optical tweezers via wavefront shaping},
author = {Unė G. Būtaitė and Christina Sharp and Michael Horodynski and Graham M. Gibson and Miles J. Padgett and Stefan Rotter and Jonathan M. Taylor and David B. Phillips},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2304.12848},
year = {2024}
}