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Contents
1 Introduction 2
2 Theory 2
3 Experimental realization 4
3.1 Experimental Setup . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
3.2 Alignment of the setup . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
3.3 Calibration of the system . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
3.4 Measurement of the trapping forces . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
4 Results 5
4.1 Output power of the laser diode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
4.2 Losses of optical system . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
4.3 Maximum trapping velocity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
4.4 Effective laser power in the focus . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
4.5 Trapping force . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
4.6 Relation of maximum trapping velocity, trapping force and focus laser power . . . . 14
4.7 Trapping efficiency Q . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
5 Discussion 16
5.1 Output power of the laser diode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
5.2 Losses of optical system . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
5.3 Maximum trapping velocity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
5.4 Effective laser power in the focus . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
5.5 Relation of maximum trapping velocity, trapping force and focus laser power . . . . 16
5.6 Trapping efficiency Q . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
5.7 Errors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
5.8 Main findings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
6 Conclusions 18
1
Optical Tweezers G-17: Yufei Peng, Neus Allande Calvet
1 Introduction
Optical tweezers were developed by Ashkin and co-workers, who in 1986 created the first stable
three dimensional trap with a single focused laser beam [1]. This technique was quickly implemented
in many laboratories and only a few years later a wide range of applications emerged, starting from
the physical sciences as trapping neutral cooled atoms, to the experimentation of biological samples,
like studying the DNA mechanical properties, measure the forces exerted by molecular motors and
more recently, performing cell nanosurgery [2].
Our goals in this experiment are to characterize our laser diode source and to understand the physics
behind optical trapping. We use one optical tweezer to trap particles in two different concentrations
in order to study the strength of such a trapping force. Finally, we will determine the efficiency of
the optical tweezer under study.
2 Theory
Optical trapping allows to manipulate microscopic samples with a focused laser beam, thanks to the
radiation pressure that light exerts on material particles. The light-matter interaction is originated
by the change in the lights momentum when it is scattered by an object. Hence, when a ray meets
a surface between two media of different refractive indexes, there is a change in the direction of the
momentum of light p, which originates a force F on it:
d~
p
= F~ (1)
dt
This momentum change results in a net force on the object, which is usually splitted in two per-
pendicular components:
1. The scattering force: Pushes the particle in the direction of propagation of the beam in
proportion to its intensity, resulting in a net force in the forward direction.
2. The gradient force: Pulls the particle towards the laser focus where the light intensity is
the highest. Therefore, the object experiences a force in the direction of the electrical field
gradient[3].
Regarding this, it is easy to imagine that effective and stable trapping occurs when gradient forces
are higher than scattering forces, situation where the object remains stably trapped at the point
of highest intensity in the light beam (that typically has a Gaussian intensity profile). This point
is at the plane of the beam waist 0 where a very steep intensity gradient is achieved by sharply
focusing the light beam, using a high NA (numerical aperture) microscope objective immersed in
oil or water. A sketch of this description is presented in figure 1.
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Optical Tweezers G-17: Yufei Peng, Neus Allande Calvet
Figure 1: Sketch of the net force of a particle in the waist of a Gaussian beam.
In general, and specially when the size of the particle r is comparable to the wavelength of the
trapping light beam , the full theory of optical tweezers is quite complex and complete electro-
magnetic theories are required to supply an accurate description [4]. However, if these magnitudes
are significantly different, the mathematical treatment can be simplified using one of the following
approaches:
1. Rayleigh regime if r . Describes the particle-light interactions using wave optics. The
trapped object can be viewed as an induced dipole that feels a Lorentz force due to the
gradient in the electric field.
2. Mie regime if r . Optical forces can be computed from simple ray optics.
Due to the size of the objects involved in our case, as in biological studies, we are interested on
using the Mie regime, which offers a very good approximation via geometrical optics bringing an
easy approach and reliable results when computing optical forces [2].
The trapping force of the focused beam Ftrap can be expressed by terms of the efficiency of the trap
Q, the refractive index of the surrounding medium n1 , the power in the focus P and the velocity
of light, as shown in equation 2.
nP
Ftrap = Q (2)
c
As this trapping force cannot be directly measured, a known viscous force FStokes was applied on
the trapped particle to counteract the optical force exerted by the set of traps. The drag force is
originated with a piezoelectric stage that, receiving a signal along the transverse direction of the
beam, transfers an oscillating movement to the sample, which contains the particles to be trapped
suspended in liquid. For an spherical particle this viscous force is denoted by equation (3), which
shows its dependencies with the viscosity of the medium , the radius of the trapped particle r and
the constant velocity of the liquid v.
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Optical Tweezers G-17: Yufei Peng, Neus Allande Calvet
3 Experimental realization
3.1 Experimental Setup
In figure 2 a sketch of the system (brought to two dimensions) is shown. As we can see, two light
sources of light are needed: On one hand, we have the infrared laser light with = 980 nm, which
is collimated and spatially filtered by means of a monomode fiber. After being expanded by a two
lens telescope system and being reflected by by dichroic and silver mirrors it finally enters into an
oil-immersed objective lens (Nikon 100x, 1.25 NA) that focuses the light to create the trap in the
plane of the sample. On the other hand, we also have a white LED light which illuminates the
sample, and a conderser lens after it.
The sample consisted in polystyrene microspheres with a radius of 4m in a liquid medium made
of two different concentrations of Glycerol, prepared in a small container composed by film and the
coverslip. The sample was placed on a piezoelectric stage (Thorlabs NanoMax) in order to transfer
an oscillating movement with a maximum amplitude of 20m, and controlled by a custom-made
Labview program. Video imaging was made with a CCD camera (Thorlabs DCU224C).
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Optical Tweezers G-17: Yufei Peng, Neus Allande Calvet
figure 2) and take a range of measures from 0 to 250 mA. In order to evaluate the losses of the laser
light source along the setup, we proceeded to calculate the output power in different positions, as
shown in figure 2. With this information we are able to detect the losses or transmission at every
part of the setup.
4 Results
4.1 Output power of the laser diode
We measure the output power at position 1st in figure 2 since it is the position where the laser first
comes out.
The original data is shown in table 1. According to this data we can plot two graph for increasing
current trend in figure 3 and decreasing current trend in figure 4, with two different tendencies
whose fitting lines are drawn in red and blue respectively.
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Optical Tweezers G-17: Yufei Peng, Neus Allande Calvet
Iinc (0, 1mA) P (0, 01mW ) Idec (0, 1mA) P (0, 1mW )
0,3 0,00 250,3 101,1
10,3 0,00 244,6 98,1
15,0 0,00 239,9 95,7
20,0 0,00 232,0 91,8
25,0 0,00 225,0 88,3
30,2 0,01 217,7 84,6
40,7 0,04 211,0 81,3
42,6 0,06 204,3 77,9
44,1 0,72 198,4 75,0
45,0 1,11 192,4 72,0
46,6 1,76 184,0 67,8
47,8 2,43 178,2 64,9
48,0 2,59 170,2 60,9
58,8 7,18 161,7 56,7
70,0 12,13 158,2 53,5
78,3 16,02 146,0 48,9
85,0 19,23 138,9 45,4
92,9 23,07 131,2 41,6
99,2 26,15 121,7 37,0
105,0 29,00 116,0 34,2
109,6 31,27 108,3 30,4
117,8 35,26 98,0 25,4
124,6 38,62 93,6 23,3
129,8 41,19 87,4 20,2
138,6 45,55 82,1 17,7
143,7 48,07 76,0 14,8
152,9 52,63 70,1 12,1
160,4 56, 3 0, 1 63,0 8,8
169,5 60, 8 0, 1 54,9 5,4
175,0 63, 5 0, 1 49,4 3,0
182,2 67, 1 0, 1 44,7 0, 95 0, 01
191,5 71, 7 0, 1 41,0 0, 04 0, 01
198,5 75, 2 0, 1 39,7 0, 03 0, 01
204,8 78, 3 0, 1 37,6 0, 02 0, 01
212,0 81, 9 0, 1 32,7 0, 01 0, 01
218,1 85 0, 1 26,6 0 0, 01
225,0 88, 4 0, 1 20,0 0 0, 01
229,2 90, 5 0, 1 15,0 0 0, 01
234,5 93, 2 0, 1 10,0 0 0, 01
239,8 95, 8 0, 1 5,0 0 0, 01
250,0 100, 9 0, 1 0,3 0 0, 01
Table 1: Measured values for the output laser power and the intensity, while increasing it (first row) and decreasing
it (third row). Note that in the measurements of power that the error changes for some values at the end due to the
change on the scale of the measuring device.
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Optical Tweezers G-17: Yufei Peng, Neus Allande Calvet
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Optical Tweezers G-17: Yufei Peng, Neus Allande Calvet
Table 2: Values of the power output depending on the position of the sensor in the setup.
We can now calculate the transmission of each element and the opticaal system using equation 4,
where I0 is the incoming intensity and I is the outcoming intensity. The results of this calculation
are shown in table 3, where elements are named in reference to figure 2.
I
T = (4)
I0
Element T (%)
L1 78, 5 0, 03
L2 89, 8 0, 02
M 89, 5 0, 02
DM 96, 9 0, 01
Total system 35, 1 0, 07
Table 4: Maximum trapping velocity for 85% Table 5: Maximum trapping velocity for 64%
glycerol sample glycerol sample
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Optical Tweezers G-17: Yufei Peng, Neus Allande Calvet
Figure 5: Plot of maximum velocity as a function of current, with 85% glycerol sample.
Figure 6: Plot of maximum velocity as a function of current, with 64% glycerol sample.
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Optical Tweezers G-17: Yufei Peng, Neus Allande Calvet
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Optical Tweezers G-17: Yufei Peng, Neus Allande Calvet
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Optical Tweezers G-17: Yufei Peng, Neus Allande Calvet
Table 7: Trapping force and maximum Table 8: Trapping force and maximum
trapping velocity, 85%sample trapping velocity, 64%sample
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Optical Tweezers G-17: Yufei Peng, Neus Allande Calvet
Figure 8: Plot of trapping force as a function of maximum trapping velocity, 85% glycerol sample
Figure 9: Plot of trapping force as a function of maximum trapping velocity, 64% glycerol sample
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Optical Tweezers G-17: Yufei Peng, Neus Allande Calvet
4.6 Relation of maximum trapping velocity, trapping force and focus laser
power
Since we already know the value of trapping force and effective laser power, we can plot the
maximum trapping velocity and trapping force over effective laser power, as shown in tables 9, and
10.
Table 9: Focus power, maximum trapping velocity and trapping force, 85%sample
Table 10: Focus power, maximum trapping velocity and trapping force, 64%sample
Figure 10: Plot of trapping force and maximum trapping force as a function of focus power, 85% glycerol sample
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Optical Tweezers G-17: Yufei Peng, Neus Allande Calvet
Figure 11: Plot of trapping force and maximum trapping force as a function of focus power, 64% glycerol sample
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Optical Tweezers G-17: Yufei Peng, Neus Allande Calvet
As is shown, for 85% glycerol sample, the value of Q when I = 250mA and I = 100mA is so
different from others that we can conclude that these two numbers are not correct enough to be
included in the final result. So we only use other four numbers to calculate and eventually we have
Q = 0.14 0.01.
As for 64% glycerol sample, we leave out the value of Q when I = 250mA out of the same reason.
Then we get the result Q = 0.79 0.03.
5 Discussion
5.1 Output power of the laser diode
As we can see in the figure 3 and 4, the relation between output and current can be described in two
parts. First part is when the current is so low that we cannot detect the output. The fitting line is
just a horizontal line shown in red in figure 3 and 4. Second part starts from where we first get the
output to the maximum current value. The second part shows a linear positive correlation between
output power and current, like the blue fitting line in figure 3 and 4. As for the two measurement
from minimum to maximum and from maximum to minimum, the results are nearly the same that
at first no output, and once there is output, it shows a linear relation.
5.5 Relation of maximum trapping velocity, trapping force and focus laser
power
As we can see in formula (2), we can get trapping force by multiplying focus power with n, Q and
1/c, which are all constants. So the relation between trapping force and focus power is linear. As
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Optical Tweezers G-17: Yufei Peng, Neus Allande Calvet
we can see it in the plot, it coincides well. Similarly to the relation between maximum trapping
velocity and focus power, 6r is also constant. So it is also linearly related. Also coincides well
with the plot.
5.7 Errors
There are many possible sources that can bring in error in this experiment, here are the result of
our discussion:
1. Error of the experiment devices, such as the ammeter and power meter.
2. The power meter cannot be fixed to the optical element to detect, and slightly action can
result in obvious difference. This measurement brings in huge error.
3. We cannot detect the focus output power directly, so we just measure the incident output
power then times transmission of the system, finally times the transmission of the objective
lens. As is said above, the measurement of transmission is not accurate, plus the fact that we
use the output power right after the objective lens as focus power. So the focus laser power
we get in this way is far from accurate, which we think is one of the biggest error in this
experiment.
4. The condition change during the measurement of maximum trapping velocity. As is already
described in detail above, we will not go into details here.
5. The instability of devices. It happens that at different time, the output laser is different while
the current is the same. We using the power detected before as the power when detecting
maximum trapping velocity, this can bring in error.
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Optical Tweezers G-17: Yufei Peng, Neus Allande Calvet
6 Conclusions
Optical tweezers have been studied. We have seen how a highly-focused laser beam can provide us
with an attractive force capable of trapping dielectric particles. After the successful calibration of
the laser, we were able to trap particle with it. Once the particle was trapped, we have obtained
the trapping forces for different particles in two different solutions. The linear dependence of the
force on the power has been successfully verified, hence the results show a strong linear behaviour.
Additionally, we have obtained the trapping efficiency of each solution. To conclude, we would
like to mention that we could have exploited our system to further study the behavior of such
particles, for instance by measuring the trap stiffness , where important concepts of physics such
as the equipartition theorem could have been experimentally studied.
References
[1] A. Ashkin, J.M.Dziedzic Optical trapping and manipulation of viruses and bacteria, Science
235, 1517-1520 (1987).
,
[2] I. Verdeny, A. FarrA c J. Mas, C. Lopez-Quesada, E. MartAn, M. Montes-Usategui Optical
trapping: A review of essential concepts, Optica Pura y Aplicada 44 (3) 527-551 (2011).
[3] Robert Kammel, Optical Tweezers Material for ASP Experimental Optics Course, February
2016.
[4] J.W. Shaevitz, A Practical Guide to Optical Trapping, Technical report, Princeton University
(2006).
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