Laser micromanipulation



Webminion: T. Nieminen
timo@physics.uq.edu.au

Movie Theatre

A clump of three weakly absorbing polystyrene spheres is trapped in an LG03 doughnut beam. Absorption of orbital angular momentum from the beam causes the clump to rotate. A Dove prism is used to reverse the helicity of the beam, reversing the direction of rotation.
[avi movie, 3.6 Mb]
[black & white mpeg movie, 205 kb]
A CuO particle (approximately 5 mm across) is radially trapped (i.e. two-dimensional trapping only) in a circularly polarized Gaussian laser beam, and rotates due to absorption of spin angular momentum.
[avi movie, 1.6 Mb]
A calcite particle aligning with the plane of polarisation of a linearly polarised trapping beam. The particle rotates at the plane of polarisation is rotated.
[avi movie, 3.0 Mb]
Calcite particle rotating in elliptically polarised light. In circularly polarised light, the rotation speed would be constant.
[avi movie, 352 kb]
A calcite particle, spun by a circularly polarised trapping beam, is used to move an SiO microgear. Since the microgear is free to move, it orbits the calcite particle as well as rotating.
[avi movie, 1.0 Mb]
A calcite particle and an SiO cog can be trapped together by a single beam. In this case, the circularly polarised beam drives the rotation of the small calcite particle, which, in turn, drives the large microgear.
[avi movie, 1.3 Mb]
The two particles can also be individually trapped using two trapping beams.
[avi movie, 1.0 Mb]