With the interference of several coherent beams, a periodical potential is produced for the particles trapped inside. The theoretical calculations show that the optical force applied on the particle in such optical lattice is in sinusoidal form. The force amplitudes vary greatly depending on the ratio of the particle size to the spacing of the optical lattice. A setup is constructed to demonstrate this dependence with two different methods: equipartition theorem and hydrodynamic-drag method. Based on this size dependence we develop an approach that allows tunable, size-dependent force selection of a subset of particles from an ensemble containing mixed particles. Combining a universal constant force with the sinusoidal optical force, a tilted washboard potential can be formed for the trapped particle. The diffusion of a particle over the barrier in this tilted washboard potential is briefly discussed. When the washboard potential oscillates, some interesting phenomena will happen: at high oscillation frequency, the particle's movement depends only on the oscillating amplitude; at low frequency, there are some combinations of the oscillation frequency and amplitude that induce the enhanced movement of the particle. This enhancement is first experimentally demonstrated with our setup. By implanting a single laser tweezers into the interferometric optical tweezers, we succeed in dynamically assembling designer colloidal lattices on the background of the interferometric optical tweezers. This new technique provides a flexible tool to design 2-d colloidal lattices.

Last modified

• 09/18/2018

Creator

• Weiqiang Mu

DOI

• https://doi.org/10.21985/N20X63

Subject

• Physics and Astronomy

Keyword

• particle separations
• colloidal crystal
• interferometer
• brownian motion
• Optical tweezers

Date created

• 2008-09-29

Resource type

• Dissertation

Rights statement

• In Copyright