Related papers: Optical trapping with structured light
The successful development and optimisation of optically-driven micromachines will be greatly enhanced by the ability to computationally model the optical forces and torques applied to such devices. In principle, this can be done by…
Ultralong trapping of light has been observed in an optically dense three-level solid medium interacting with a pair of counterpropagating coupling fields. Unlike the light trapping based on standing-wave gratings excited by the same…
For the past few decades, structured light has been gaining popularity across various research fields. Its fascinating properties have been exploited for both previously unforeseen and established applications from new perspectives. Crucial…
Optical binding refers to the light-induced interaction between two or more objects illuminated by laser fields. The high tunability of the strength, sign, and reciprocity of this interaction renders it highly attractive for controlling…
In spite of the widespread use of optical tweezers as a quantitative tool to measure small forces, there exists no unambiguous and simple experimental method for either validating its theoretically predicted form or empirically…
Transmission of high power laser beams through partially absorbing materials modifies the light propagation via a thermally-induced effect known as thermal lensing. This may cause changes in the beam waist position and degrade the beam…
Optical communication is an integral part of the modern economy, having all but replaced electronic communication systems. Future growth in bandwidth appears to be on the horizon using structured light, encoding information into the spatial…
We demonstrate optical trapping and manipulation of defects and transparent microspheres in nematic liquid crystals (LCs). The three-dimensional director fields and positions of the particles are visualized using the Fluorescence Confocal…
Optical tweezers, with their high precision, dynamic control, and non-invasiveness, are increasingly important in scientific research and applications at the micro and nano scales. However, manipulation by optical tweezers is challenged by…
In the last two decades, optical vortices carried by twisted light wavefronts have attracted a great deal of interest, providing not only new physical insights into light-matter interactions, but also a transformative platform for boosting…
The size of particles which can be trapped in optical tweezers ranges from tens of nanometres to tens of micrometres. This size regime also includes large single molecules. Here we present experiments demonstrating that optical tweezers can…
A key element in the generation of optical torque in optical traps, which occurs when electromagnetic angular momentum is transferred from the trapping beam to the trapped particle by scattering, is the symmetries of the scattering particle…
Optical binding interactions between laser-trapped spherical microparticles are familiar in a wide range of trapping configurations. Recently it has been demonstrated that these experiments can be accurately modeled using Mie scattering or…
We propose to create and detect opto-mechanical entanglement by storing one component of an entangled state of light in a mechanical resonator and then retrieving it. Using micro-macro entanglement of light as recently demonstrated…
The ability to steer light propagation inside scattering media has long been sought-after due to its potential widespread applications. To form optical foci inside scattering media, the only feasible strategy is to guide photons by using…
Optomechanical systems are suitable for elucidating quantum phenomena at the macroscopic scale in the sense of the mass scale. The systems should be well-isolated from the environment to avoid classical noises, which conceal quantum…
Optical tweezers are a technique in which microscopic-sized particles, including living cells and bacteria, can be non-intrusively trapped with high accuracy solely using focused light. The technique has therefore become a powerful tool in…
Holographic techniques significantly extend the capabilities of laser tweezing, making possible extended trapping patterns for manipulating large numbers of particles and volumes of soft matter. We describe practical methods for creating…
The spin angular momentum in an elliptically polarized beam of light plays several noteworthy roles in optical traps. It contributes to the linear momentum density in a non-uniform beam, and thus to the radiation pressure exerted on…
The subject of this review are atom traps based on optical dipole forces in laser fields, along with their unique features as storage devices at ultralow energies. The basic physics of the dipole interaction is discussed, and the…