Enhanced optical trapping via structured scattering
arXiv:2105.09539 · doi:10.1038/nphoton.2015.160
Abstract
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 generally thought to allow efficient interference. Instead, optical trapping is typically achieved via deflection of the incident field. Here we show that a suitably structured incident field can achieve beamsplitter-like interactions with scattering particles. The resulting trap offers order-of-magnitude higher stiffness than the usual Gaussian trap in one axis, even when constrained to phase-only structuring. We demonstrate trapping of 3.5 to 10.0~m silica spheres, achieving stiffness up to 27.54.1 times higher than is possible using Gaussian traps, and two orders of magnitude higher measurement signal-to-noise ratio. These results are highly relevant to many applications, including cellular manipulation, fluid dynamics, micro-robotics, and tests of fundamental physics.
References in corpus (7)
- Backward Pulling Force from a Forward Propagating Beam
- Millikelvin cooling of an optically trapped microsphere in vacuum
- Short-range force detection using optically-cooled levitated microspheres
- Search for Millicharged Particles Using Optically Levitated Microspheres
- Optical Quadratic Measure Eigenmodes
- Sub-diffraction Focussing using Quadratic Measure Eigenmodes
- Optical Eigenmodes; Exploiting the quadratic nature of the energy flux and of scattering interactions
Cited by in corpus (16)
- Electromagnetic Angular Momentum
- Electromagnetic Force and Momentum
- Optical Polarization Möbius Strips and Points of Purely Transverse Spin Density
- Optimal Wave Fields for Micro-manipulation in Complex Scattering Environments
- Tomographic active optical trapping of arbitrarily shaped objects by exploiting 3-D refractive index maps
- Theory and practice of simulation of optical tweezers
- Photon-efficient optical tweezers via wavefront shaping
- Optimal nanoparticle forces, torques, and illumination fields
- Multi-mode four-wave mixing with a spatially-structured pump
- Classical Characterization of quantum waves: Comparison between the caustic and the zeros of the Madelung-Bohm potential
- Germanium microparticles as optically induced oscillators in optical tweezers
- Temporal dependence of optically-induced photophoretic force on absorbing airborne particles by a power-modulated laser
- Geometric-Phase Waveplates for Free-Form Dark Hollow beams
- Design of a hybrid silicon-plasmonic co-propagant integrated coherent perfect absorber
- Projecting light beams with 3D waveguide arrays
- Realization of doubly inhomogeneous waveplates for structuring of light beams