Beam Ion Trap Research Articles

Switchable Optical Trapping of Mie‐Resonant Phase‐Change Nanoparticles

AbstractOptical tweezers revolutionized the manipulation of nanoscale objects. Typically, tunable manipulations of optical tweezers rely on adjusting either the trapping laser beams or the optical environment surrounding the nanoparticles. Here, tunable and switchable trapping using nanoparticles made of a phase‐change material (vanadium dioxide or VO2) are achieved. By varying the intensity of the trapping beam, transitions of the VO2 between monoclinic and rutile phases are induced. Depending on the nanoparticles' sizes, they exhibit one of three behaviors: small nanoparticles (in the settings, radius wavelength ) remain always attracted by the laser beam in both material phases, large nanoparticles () remain always repelled. However, within the size range of , the phase transition of the VO2 switches optical forces between attractive and repulsive, thereby pulling/pushing them toward/away from the beam center. The effect is reversible, allowing the same particle to be attracted and repelled repeatedly. The phenomenon is governed by optical Mie modes of the nanoparticles and their alterations during the phase transition of the VO2. This work provides an alternative solution for dynamic optical tweezers and paves a way to new possibilities, including optical sorting, light‐driven optomechanics and single‐molecule biophysics.

Measurement of the optical stiffness of photophoretic force tweezers in air

We report on a method of measuring the stiffness in photophoretic force tweezers in air by using an experimental configuration with two counter-propagating hollow beams. By setting the optical traps of both beams in the same focal plane of the camera, we are able to record the flight procedure of a trapped particle into the other trap after the initial trapping beam is switched off. Then, the stiffness of optical trap can be obtained by fitting the relationship of particle position vs time during the flight procedure. It is found that the measurement is tolerant to the distance between the traps and laser power variation. In addition, the measured stiffness is demonstrated applicable in determining the size of aerosol particles. The reliable method provided in this work is not only useful in studying the physical behavior of signal particle under atmosphere condition but also meaningful in the applications of aerosol studies, such as in situ aerosol characterization and the local surrounding environment sensing.

Detection of recurrent fluorescence from anthracene using an electrostatic ion beam trap

The recurrent fluorescence of anthracene cations (C14H10+) was investigated using an electrostatic ion beam trap. The photon emission from the excited anthracene cations confined in the trap was observed in the order of milliseconds. The photon yields as a function of the wavelength in the range of 450–860 nm were measured by optical filters and a cooled photomultiplier, which revealed that the observed photon emission is attributed to the D2 → D0 transition of C14H10+. However, the time range of the photon emission is considerably longer than that of the spontaneous emission induced by the D2 → D0 transition (<1 μs). The number of photons emitted by the recurrent fluorescence of C14H10+ as a function of time was calculated using the previously reported theoretical decay rates of C14H10+ by recurrent fluorescence and thermal dissociation. The calculation results justified the time dependence of the measured number of photons over the extended time range. These results demonstrate that we successfully detected recurrent fluorescence photons emitted from excited anthracene cations.

Coherent control of an optical tweezer phonon laser

The creation and manipulation of coherence continues to capture the attention of scientists and engineers. The optical laser is a canonical example of a system that, in principle, exhibits complete coherence. Recent research has focused on the creation of coherent, laser-like states in other physical systems. The phonon laser is one example where it is possible to amplify self-sustained mechanical oscillations. A single mode phonon laser in a levitated optical tweezer has been demonstrated through appropriate balance of active feedback gain and damping. In this work, coherent control of the dynamics of an optical tweezer phonon laser is used to share coherence between its different modes of oscillation, creating a multimode phonon laser. The coupling of the modes is achieved by periodically rotating the asymmetric optical potential in the transverse focal plane of the trapping beam via trap laser polarization rotation. The presented theory and experiment demonstrate that coherence can be transferred across different modes of an optical tweezer phonon laser, and are a step toward using these systems for precision measurement and quantum information processing.

Effects of detection-beam focal offset on back-focal-plane displacement detection

High-resolution displacement detection can be achieved by analyzing the scattered light of the trapping beams from the particle in optical tweezers. In some applications where trapping and detecting beams must be separated, a detecting beam can be introduced for independent displacement measurement. However, the detecting beam focus possibly deviates from the center of the particle, which will affect the performance of displacement detection. Here, we detect the displacement of the particle by utilizing the forward scattered light of the detection beam from the particle. The effects of the lateral and axial offsets between the detection beam focus and the particle center on displacement detection are analyzed by the simulation and experiment. These results show that the lateral offsets will decrease the detection sensitivity and linear range. Moreover, it aggravates the crosstalk between the x-direction signal and the y-direction signal of the quadrant photodiode. Besides, the axial offsets also affect the detection sensitivity. More interestingly, an optimal axial offset can improve the sensitivity of displacement detection substantially. In addition, the influence of system parameters, such as particle radius a, numerical aperture of the condenser NAc, and numerical aperture of the objective NAo, on the optimal axial offset is also discussed. This work not only provides ideas for improving the performance of precision measurement by the method of forward scattered light detection but also expands the application of this method in fundamental physics.

Random laser emission from dye-doped gain media with optically trapped scattering particles

In this study, an optical trapping technique is employed to manipulate the scatterer distribution within a random laser medium. By focusing the trapping beams into small regions within the three-dimensional scattering medium, the scattering particles around them are concentrated in those regions, resulting in an inhomogeneous scatterer distribution. The experimental results show that optical trapping increases the maximum spike intensity in the emission spectrum. Furthermore, the spectral spike intensity depends on the power of the trap spots. The relationship between the maximum and average spike intensities in the emission spectra exhibits a characteristic observed in other random lasers with inhomogeneous scatterer distributions.

Spectral tweezers: Single sample spectroscopy using optoelectronic tweezers.

A scheme that combines optoelectronic tweezers (OET) with spectroscopic analysis is presented. Referred to as spectral tweezers, the approach uses a single focused light beam that acts both as the trapping beam for OET and the probe beam for spectroscopy. Having simultaneous manipulation and spectral characterization ability, the method is used to isolate single micro-samples from clusters and perform spectral measurements. Experimental results show that a characteristic spectral signature can be obtained for a given sample. The proposed approach can be easily integrated into the optical setups used for conventional OETs with only a few additional optical components, making it a convenient tool for bio-analytical applications.

Fully angularly resolved 3D microrheology with optical tweezers

Microrheology with optical tweezers (MOT) is an all-optical technique that allows the user to investigate a materials’ viscoelastic properties at microscopic scales, and is particularly useful for those materials that feature complex microstructures, such as biological samples. MOT is increasingly being employed alongside 3D imaging systems and particle tracking methods to generate maps showing not only how properties may vary between different points in a sample but also how at a single point the viscoelastic properties may vary with direction. However, due to the diffraction limited shape of focussed beams, optical traps are inherently anisotropic in 3D. This can result in a significant overestimation of the fluids’ viscosity in certain directions. As such, the rheological properties can only be accurately probed along directions parallel or perpendicular to the axis of trap beam propagation. In this work, a new analytical method is demonstrated to overcome this potential artefact. This is achieved by performing principal component analysis on 3D MOT data to characterise the trap, and then identify the frequency range over which trap anisotropy influences the data. This approach is initially applied to simulated data for a Newtonian fluid where the trap anisotropy induced maximum error in viscosity is reduced from ~ 150% to less than 6%. The effectiveness of the method is corroborated by experimental MOT measurements performed with water and gelatine solutions, thus confirming that the microrheology of a fluid can be extracted reliably across a wide frequency range and in any arbitrary direction. This work opens the door to fully spatially and angularly resolved 3D mapping of the rheological properties of soft materials over a broad frequency range.

Suppressing the dephasing of optically trapped atoms inside a hollow-core fiber.

We demonstrate the suppression of inhomogeneous dephasing of cold 87Rb atoms optically trapped inside a hollow-core fiber. The differential light shift (DLS) for the clock transition caused by the trapping beam is reduced by one order of magnitude through the use of a weak compensation laser beam that is spatially mode-matched to the trapping beam. The coherence of the DLS-compensated system is characterized by microwave Ramsey interferometry, which shows Ramsey fringes with a contrast of over 0.6 at a separation time of 10 ms. The dephasing time, measured by Ramsey spectroscopy at different separation times, reaches tens of milliseconds after DLS cancellation, limited by the residual DLS caused by mode mismatching between the two laser beams. This work paves the way for compact and portable fiber-guided atom interferometers.

Ion-Ion Interaction Induced Nondispersive Dynamics in an Electrostatic Ion Beam Trap

Ion-Ion Interaction Induced Nondispersive Dynamics in an Electrostatic Ion Beam Trap

Unravelling keyhole instabilities and laser absorption dynamics during laser irradiation of Ti6Al4V: A high-fidelity thermo-fluidic study

A 3D multi-phase thermo-fluidic solver is implemented to investigate the laser-melt pool interaction dynamics and keyhole instabilities during stationary and moving laser irradiation. The physical phenomena such as phase changes, thermocapillary driven flow, multiple reflections of the Gaussian laser beam and beam trapping, vaporization recoil pressure, and heat losses (convective, radiative, and evaporative) have been incorporated in the model. A detailed parametric study has been carried out to investigate the influence of the laser beam spot diameter and the traversal speed on the laser absorption dynamics and melt pool characteristics. For both the stationary and moving laser irradiation, it is found that during the initial transient stage, the melt pool morphology belongs to the conduction melting mode with laser absorption according to the normal incidence condition of the Fresnel equation. Later, depending on the irradiating laser intensity, a melt transition occurs from conduction to the keyhole mode of melting, during which laser absorption rises sharply. The laser absorption and the vapor depression morphology in the keyhole regime show substantial oscillations (periodic and non-periodic) due to the complex hydrodynamics of the recoil pressure, the surface-tension dynamics, and convection-driven flow resulting in the opening and closing of the vapor depression. These oscillations are quantified, and a direct correlation of the laser absorptance with the keyhole depression depth has been observed for stationary laser irradiation. The keyhole closure mechanism and bubble trapping-ejection phenomena have been explored during the solidification stage. The numerically predicted melt pool dimensions match well with the in-house performed experimental measurements and published benchmarking experiments combining integrating sphere radiometry and in-situ X-ray radiography.

Improvement of the reproducibility in LIBS single levitated aerosol particle analysis based on particle size-selectivity of photophoretic optical trap

To improve the reproducibility of single particle analysis with LIBS, we study the particle size selectivity of photophoretic optical trap. Firstly, the photophoretic force is theoretically simulated and size selectivity in a Gaussian trapping beam is analyzed. Then, the particle size is statistically examined under different power of the trapping Gaussian beam. The results indicate the larger particles are selected by the trap with higher laser power, which is in good agreement with the theoretical expectation. In addition, comparing the particle size distribution of hollow beam trapping with that of Gaussian beam, we found the particle size distribution in hollow beam trapping is broader, which is due to the larger freedom of radiating area on the particle in the hollow beam. Finally, the reproducibility of single particle LIBS is testified. The results show better reproducibility can be achieved with Gaussian beam as a narrower range in particle size is obtained by the trap. This work suggest optical trap can provide a useful tool to control the freedom of particle size and therefore improve the reproducibility of single particle analysis.

Flexible Generation and Manipulation of Microwave Bottle Beam Using a Reconfigurable Metamirror

Bottle beams have drawn considerable research interest due to their attractive features and applications in beam trapping. Herein, the flexible generation and modulation of bottle beams utilizing a reconfigurable metamirror over a non‐negligible frequency band ranging from 8.5 to 9.5 GHz is investigated. A varactor diode is embedded into each meta‐atom on the metamirror enabling the achievement of a nearly 2π phase coverage by varying the external bias voltage. Based on the caustic theory, several configurations of bottle beam with distinct radius a are realized as proof‐of‐concept validation. Besides, the flexible modulation of the operating frequency is analyzed by judiciously controlling the bias voltages applied to the metasurface. The experimental results are in good agreement with those obtained from numerical simulations. Such a flexible bottle beam generator shows good potential in the microwave regime for near‐field applications, such as imaging and power transmission.

New topological rainbow trapping approach for phononic beam-foundation systems

Rainbow trapping is of great significance for frequency-based wave splitting and broadband wave attenuation. By recognizing the deficiency of prevailing gradient rainbow reflection devices in terms of energy concentration and broadband vibration isolation, we design a new topological rainbow trapping device by introducing a topological protected interface mode (TPIM) into the prevailing gradient rainbow device. Therefore, a topological rainbow trapping beam composed of a homogenous beam rested on an alternate and gradient foundation is constructed. Using theoretical and numerical analysis, we perform a unit-cell band structure analysis. The dependence of bandgap region and group velocity on the reference foundation stiffness is investigated. With the help of the topological phase transition and Zak phase analysis, we successfully predict and demonstrate TPIM. A quantitative evaluation of the advancement of topological rainbow devices upon the prevailing gradient device in vibration amplification and broadband wave attenuation is also presented. We believe that the robust one-dimensional topological rainbow trapping beam will be useful in many applications, such as energy harvesting, wave splitting, and vibration control.

Time-dependent dynamics of radio-frequency-bunched ions in an electrostatic ion beam trap.

The dynamics of ions in an electrostatic ion beam trap in the presence of an external time-dependent field is studied with a recently developed particle-in-cell simulation technique. The simulation technique, capable of accounting for space-charge effects, has reproduced all the experimental results on the bunch dynamics in the radio frequency mode. With simulation, the motion of ions is visualized in phase space and it is shown that the ion-ion interaction strongly affects the distribution of ions in phase space in the presence of an rf driving voltage.

Quantitative characterization of autofocusing and trapping of multi-Airy vortex beams

Abruptly autofocusing vortex beams were proposed for a variety of applications such as optical manipulation, but their quantitative characterization of their trapping capability remains largely unexplored. In this paper, we propose a type of autofocusing vortex beams named multi-Airy vortex beams (MAVBs) and investigate their autofocusing and trapping characteristics theoretically and experimentally. It is found that the autofocusing performance and trapping ability of MAVBs can be enhanced by adjusting the relevant parameters and increasing the number of superposed Airy within a certain range. Although the trapping force and trapping stiffness of MAVBs decrease as the topological charge increases, we found that MAVBs have advantages in capturing and manipulating large-sized particles in our experiments. In the process of manipulating multiple particles for rotation, the larger the topological charge, the more particles can be rotated simultaneously by MAVBs. Moreover, the speed and even the direction of rotation can be easily adjusted by controlling the degree of dispersion between particles. Our work provides a guide to quantitatively exploring the optical trapping capabilities of autofocusing vortex beams, which may lead to different photonic tools for optical trapping and manipulation.

Theoretical Analysis and Experimental Verification of the Influence of Polarization on Counter-Propagating Optical Tweezers.

Counter-propagating optical tweezers are experimental platforms for the frontier exploration of science and precision measurement. The polarization of the trapping beams significantly affects the trapping status. Using the T-matrix method, we numerically analyzed the optical force distribution and the resonant frequency of counter-propagating optical tweezers in different polarizations. We also verified the theoretical result by comparing it with the experimentally observed resonant frequency. Our analysis shows that polarization has little influence on the radial axis motion, while the axial axis force distribution and the resonant frequency are sensitive to polarization change. Our work can be used in designing harmonic oscillators which can change their stiffness conveniently, and monitoring polarization in counter-propagating optical tweezers.

Optical trapping in air on a single interference fringe

Stable and reproducible trapping in air of 1μm and 500 nm dielectric particles has been realized using a dual beam optical fiber tweezers with cleaved commercial single mode fibers. The influence of the interference fringes of the two coherent and counter-propagating trapping beam is investigated by controlling the fringe visibility. Optical trapping on a series of up to 10 fringes or trapping on only one to two fringes has been observed in distinct experiments. High axial trapping efficiencies of up to 1 nN μm−1W−1 is observed. The experimental results are supported by numerical simulations.

Design and fabrication of an acoustic tweezer system for kidney stone manipulation

Acoustic radiation forces can surround and trap objects to manipulate them in three dimensions. It has been demonstrated that the radiation forces can maneuver solid heavy objects similar to kidney stones in live animals under safe acoustic exposure levels. However, initial experiments identified limitations on the steering range of objects because of the array design, and tissue aberrations. Here, we present a method to design an in-house 256 multi-element array to improve the steering range of 2–5 mm stones. We modeled the acoustic field for various geometrical parameters including the element size, transducer focusing, and F-number at a frequency range from 0.5 to 1 MHz. The parameters were then used to simulate the trapping radiation forces on stone models to finalize the design of the array. The array was fabricated with a center frequency of 950 kHz and a focal distance located at 120 mm and an F-number of 1.5. A holography scan was performed to characterize the transducer output. Various trapping beams were measured and compared to simulations. The resulting radiation forces produced were on the order of the weight of the trapped 2-5 mm stone models. [Work supported by NIH P01-DK043881, K25-132416, and Applied Physics Laboratory SEED fellowship.]

Controllable atomic collision in a tight optical dipole trap.

Single atoms are interesting candidates for studying quantum optics and quantum information processing. Recently, trapping and manipulation of single atoms using tight optical dipole traps has generated considerable interest. Here we report an experimental investigation of the dynamics of atoms in a modified optical dipole trap with a backward propagating dipole trap beam, where a change in the two-atom collision rate by six times has been achieved. The theoretical model presented gives a prediction of high probabilities of few-atom loading rates under proper experimental conditions. This work provides an alternative approach to the control of the few-atom dynamics in a dipole trap and the study of the collective quantum optical effects of a few atoms.