Tag: Laura Pérez García

Laura Pérez presented the work “FORMA and BEFORE: expanding applications of optical tweezers” at the ELS conference (online) on the 13th of July.

The main objective of the Electromagnetic and Light Scattering Conference (ELS) is to bring together scientists and engineers studying various aspects of light scattering and to provide a relaxed academic atmosphere for in-depth discussions of theoretical advances, measurements, and applications.

Abstract: 
FORMA (force reconstruction via maximum-likelihood-estimator analysis) addresses the need to measure the force fields acting on microscopic particles. Compared to alternative established methods, FORMA is faster, simpler, more accurate, and more precise. Furthermore, FORMA can also measure non-conservative and out-of-equilibrium force fields. Here, after a brief introduction to FORMA, I will present its use, advantages, and limitations. I will conclude with the most recent work where we exploit Bayesian inference to expand FORMA’s scope of application.

In this presentation, Laura Pérez will talk about FORMA  (force reconstruction via maximum-likelihood-estimator analysis) which addresses the need of measuring the force fields acting on microscopic particles. Compared to alternative established methods, FORMA is faster, simpler, more accurate, and more precise. Furthermore, FORMA can also measure non-conservative and out-of-equilibrium force fields. Here, after a brief introduction to FORMA, I will present its use, advantages, and limitations. I will conclude with some recent work where we exploit Bayesian inference to expand the scope of application of FORMA.

References:
Laura Pérez García, Jaime Donlucas Pérez, Giorgio Volpe, Alejandro V. Arzola & Giovanni Volpe, High-Performance Reconstruction of Microscopic Force Fields from Brownian Trajectories, Nature Communications 9, 5166 (2018)

Time: 6 March 2021
Place: Online
Link: FORMA: expanding applications of optical tweezers at SPIE Photonics West OPTO

Optical force field reconstruction using Brownian trajectories
Laura Pérez García, Jaime Donlucas Pérez, Giorgio Volpe, Alejandro V. Arzola & Giovanni Volpe

Click here to see the slides.
Twitter Link: here.

Optical tweezers have evolved into sophisticated tools for the measurement and application of nanoscopic forces; its use ranges from mechanobiology to cooling and trapping atoms.
Despite their ever-growing interest, the methods employed to measure optical forces have not changed much in the last 30 years. The key methods measure the potential function, the autocorrelation function (ACF), or the power spectral density (PSD) of an optically trapped particle’s motion. Unfortunately, all these techniques have some drawbacks: they require large amounts of data acquired for long times (potential) or at high frequency (ACF and PSD); they cannot identify non-conservative force-field components; they can only measure the properties of stable equilibrium positions, and they require setting several parameters carefully and expertly [1]. These shortcomings have limited the possibility of measuring nanoscopic forces in many potential applications, such as experiments with non-conservative force fields and out-of-equilibrium conditions.

We have recently introduced a simple, robust, and fast algorithm that permits to reconstruct microscopic force fields from Brownian trajectories, Force Reconstruction via Maximum-likelihood-estimator Analysis — FORMA. FORMA exploits the fact that in the proximity of an equilibrium position, the force field can be approximated by a linear form, and therefore, optimally estimated using a linear maximum-likelihood-estimator. Its key advantages are that FORMA does not require setting analysis parameters, it executes orders-of-magnitude faster than other more standard methods, and it requires ten times fewer data to achieve the same precision and accuracy. Finally, FORMA also permits the characterization of non-conservative force fields and non-stable equilibrium positions in extended force fields [2].

References:

[1] Jones et al. Optical tweezers: Principles and applications. Cambridge, 2015.
[2] L. Pérez García, et al. Nat. Commun. 9, 5166 (2018).

Poster Session
Time: June 22nd 2020
Place: Twitter

POM Conference
Link: POM
Time: June 25th 2020
Place: Online

Poster Slides