Stable trapping and manually controlled rotation of an asymmetric or birefringent microparticle using dual-mode split-beam optical tweezers

Inserting a coverslip into half of a Gaussian laser beam at a suitable tilting angle can make the single-mode laser beam become closely spaced dual light spots at the laser focus. In this way, we can reform the conventional single-beam optical tweezers easily and construct a set of dual-mode split-b...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Optics express 2010-07, Vol.18 (14), p.14724-14729
Main Authors: Sheu, Fang-Wen, Lan, Tzu-Kai, Lin, Yu-Chung, Chen, Shiung, Ay, Chyung
Format: Article
Language:English
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Summary:Inserting a coverslip into half of a Gaussian laser beam at a suitable tilting angle can make the single-mode laser beam become closely spaced dual light spots at the laser focus. In this way, we can reform the conventional single-beam optical tweezers easily and construct a set of dual-mode split-beam optical tweezers, which can be used to manually rotate a trapped and twisted red blood cell around the optical axis. Furthermore, we demonstrate that the split-beam optical tweezers can also stably trap and orient a birefringent polystyrene micro strip particle, which otherwise will self rotate at a varying speed along the structural principal axes, fast spin about the optical axis in a tilting pose, or precess like a gyroscope, in the original linearly polarized single-beam optical tweezers.
ISSN:1094-4087
1094-4087
DOI:10.1364/OE.18.014724