Abstract
In this contribution, we report on the implementation of a novel noise-enabled optical ratchet system. We demonstrate that, unlike commonly-used ratchet schemes—where complex asymmetric optical potentials are needed—efficient transport of microparticles across a one-dimensional optical lattice can be produced by introducing controllable noise in the system. This work might open interesting routes towards the development of new technologies aimed at enhancing the efficiency of transport occurring at the micro- and nanoscale, from novel particle-sorting tools to efficient molecular motors.
Highlights
In this contribution, we report on the implementation of a novel noise-enabled optical ratchet system
Recently it has been shown that for certain coherently evolving systems, noise can enhance their transport efficiency[1,2,3,4,5,6]. This fascinating phenomenon, coined environment-assisted quantum transport, has been experimentally observed in systems where controllable noise has been introduced in order to enhance the transfer efficiency of electronic[7] and optical[8,9,10] signals
Recent theoretical studies have suggested that this effect may be observed in purely classical systems[11] and that it might be exploited to enhance the transport of microscopic objects across potential energy landscapes[12,13,14]
Summary
We report on the implementation of a novel noise-enabled optical ratchet system. Transport across an array of potentials has been achieved in the micro- and nanoscale domain by means of ratchet systems, where movement of a particle is mediated by a combination of a periodic external force and asymmetric potentials which privilege motion in one direction while hindering it in the opposite[15,16,17,18,19,20,21,22]. These asymmetric potentials represent the ratchet and the pawl in the classical Smoluchowski-Feynman ratchet[23,24,25], while the periodic force represents the Brownian perturbations. This system resembles a tilted Smoluchowski-Feynman ratchet[29], where a constant external force is added to the potentials, slightly tilting them in the direction of the force
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