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Introduction to Optical Trapping

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Structured Light Fields

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Abstract

Light that is reflected, refracted or absorbed by small particles in general undergoes a change in momentum. In turn, the particles experience an analogous change in momentum, i.e. a resulting force. It was demonstrated already more than 40 years ago that radiation pressure from a (laser) light source can accelerate microscopic particles. The historically most important insight, however, was that microscopic particles cannot only be pushed by the radiation pressure, but they can be at will confined in all three dimensions, leading to the powerful concept of optical tweezers. This chapter provides a short overview on the basic physical principles and concepts of optical trapping and reviews important milestones. While the focus of this overview will be on classical optical tweezers, related concepts and applications are discussed when beneficial for the understanding of the following chapters.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    The potential energy is derived by integrating Eq. (2.3), assuming that the gradient force is conservative.

  2. 2.

    We recall that solutions of the Helmholtz equation are solutions of the Maxwell equations if we additionally require that the fields are divergence free, i.e. \(\nabla\cdot \vec{E}=0\) and \(\nabla\cdot\vec{H}=0\) (Novotny and Hecht 2006)

  3. 3.

    Note that the s parameter is independent of the wavelength.

  4. 4.

    To keep the presentation concise, some quantities are only loosely defined here. Cf. Chap. 6, Sect. 6.1 for a more rigorous definition.

  5. 5.

    More strictly speaking, LG as well as HG modes are a complete, orthogonal basis of solutions of the paraxial wave equation. Thus, any HG or LG mode can be expanded in a finite series of either modes (Beijersbergen et al. 1993).

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  1. Institute of Applied Physics, University of Münster, Corrensstraße 2, 48149, Münster, Germany

    Dr. Mike Woerdemann

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Woerdemann, M. (2012). Introduction to Optical Trapping. In: Structured Light Fields. Springer Theses. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-29323-8_2

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