Related papers: Optical microrheology using rotating laser-trapped…
Viscosity is a key property of cell membranes that controls mobility of embedded proteins and membrane remodeling. Measuring it is challenging because existing approaches involve complex experimental designs and/or models, and the…
Interferometry can completely redirect light, providing the potential for strong and controllable optical forces. However, small particles do not naturally act like interferometric beamsplitters, and the optical scattering from them is not…
The experimental literature on the motion of mesoscopic probe particles through polymer solutions is systematically reviewed. The primary focus is the study of diffusive motion of small probe particles. Comparison is made with measurements…
Optically-levitated nanoparticles in vacuum offer a pristine platform for high-quality mechanical oscillators, enabling a wide range of precision measurements and quantum technologies. A key performance metric in such systems is the…
The recent demonstration of electron vortex beams has opened up the new possibility of studying orbital angular momentum (OAM) in the interaction between electron beams and matter. To this aim, methods to analyze the OAM of an electron beam…
An extended interference pattern close to surface may result in both a transmissive or evanescent surface fields for large area manipulation of trapped particles. The affinity of differing particle sizes to a moving standing wave light…
Super-oscillating beams can be used to create light spots whose size is below the diffraction limit with a side ring of high intensity adjacent to them. Optical traps made of the super-oscillating part of such beams exhibit superior…
The controlled rotation of solid particles trapped in a liquid by an ultrasonic vortex beam is observed. Single polystyrene beads, or clusters, can be trapped against gravity while simultaneously rotated. The induced rotation of a single…
Light carrying orbital angular momentum (OAM) has attractive applications in the fields of precise optical measurements and high capacity optical communications. We study the rotation of a light beam propagating in warm 87Rb atomic vapor…
While the alignment and rotation of microparticles in optical traps have received increased attention recently, one of the earliest examples has been almost totally neglected the alignment of particles relative to the beam axis, as opposed…
The controllable positioning of a vacuum-levitated object near a material surface is of importance for studying short-range forces, such as Casimir forces, interfacial friction forces, or gravity in yet unexplored parameter regimes. Here we…
Standard optical tweezers rely on optical forces that arise when a focused laser beam interacts with a microscopic particle: scattering forces, which push the particle along the beam direction, and gradient forces, which attract it towards…
The spin-orbit interaction in a focused-reflected beam of light results in spatially non-uniform polarization in the beam cross-section due to the superposition of orthogonal field components and polarization-dependent interface reflection…
The dual-fiber optical trap, owing to its high sensitivity and facile miniaturization, holds significant actual application value in fields such as high-precision metrology of mechanical quantities and biological manipulation. The…
We observe clear precessional motion of highly birefringent liquid crystal (LC) particles trapped in a spherically aberrated optical trap which is built around a tilted refractive index stratified medium. For input circularly polarized…
A high sensitivity force sensor based on dielectric microspheres in vacuum, optically trapped by a single, upward-propagating laser beam, is described. Off-axis parabolic mirrors are used both to focus the 1064~nm trapping beam and to…
Custom-designed colloidal particles in an optical tweezers act as light-mills in a fluid. In particular, aqueous suspensions of capped colloids, in which half of the surface is covered with metal layers, are investigated. Due to their…
The viscosity of lipid bilayer membranes plays an important role in determining the diffusion constant of embedded proteins and the dynamics of membrane deformations, yet it has historically proven very difficult to measure. Here we…
We demonstrate photophoretic force-based optical trapping of multiple absorbing particles in air by loosely focusing a Gaussian beam with a series of convex lenses of different focal lengths, and investigate the dependence of the number of…
We propose a rigorous theory for the optical trapping by optical vortices, which is emerging as an important tool to trap mesoscopic particles. The common perception is that the trapping is solely due to the gradient force, and may be…