Non conservative optical forces of speckle fields generated with a SLM
Seminar by Laura Pérez García from the Universidad National Autónoma de México (UNAM).
Speckle patterns arise when a highly coherent light source impinges on a rough surface or when it propagates through an inhomogeneous media. This phenomenon appeared after the invention of the laser in the 70’s and, initially was considered as a feature to avoid in optical setups since it limits the imaging resolution. However, speckle patterns can give information about the process that generates it and also can be incorporated by researchers in astronomy, surface characterization, biology, medicine and chemical processes [1, 2, 3]. In particular, speckle has been used in the last years in the area of optical micromanipulation to study the interaction of colloidal particles in random potentials[4, 5]. It is important the use of speckle patterns since it has a wide range of characteristic lengths, optical vortexes and intrinsic robustness to misalignment.
We’ve studied speckle patterns generated by a spatial light modulator (SLM), emphasizing in the intensity distribution, its spatial properties and the dynamical properties of particles subjected to these fields. Specifically, I studied the dynamical behavior of 1.54μm and 1μm spherical polystyrene particles embedded in deionized water in the presence of a speckle light field. We generated the speckle pattern using a 532 nm-wavelength laser which impinged on an SLM, which projected random values for each pixel, and then redirected to an optical micromanipulation system. It is important to mention that, by varying the optical resolution of the system with a diaphragm, we allowed the interference between all the wavefronts.
We analyzed the particle’s trajectories in the overdamped regime as an approximation for the particle dynamics. We didn’t assume the existence of a scalar potential, so we can study the nonconservative nature of the optical forces[6]. Additionally, the mean squared displacement was calculated and com- pared with free diffusion, we observed different regimes, owing to the spatial features in the speckle patterns used.
- J.C. Dainty. Laser speckle and related phenomena. Topics in Applied Physics. Springer-Verlag, 1984.
- J.W. Goodman. Speckle Phenomena in Optics: Theory and Applications. Roberts & Company, 2007.
- H.J. Rabal and R.A. Braga. Dynamic Laser Speckle and Applications. Optical Science and Engineering. CRC Press, 2008.
- Florian Evers, Christoph Zunke, Richard D L Hanes, J ̈org Bewerunge, Imad Ladadwa, Andreas Heuer, Stefan U. Egelhaaf, Giorgio Giovanni Volpe, Giorgio Giovanni Volpe, and Sylvain Gigan. Particle dynamics in two-dimensional random-energy landscapes: Experiments and simulations. Physical Review E – Statistical, Nonlinear, and Soft Matter Physics, 88(2):3936, 2014.
- Giorgio Volpe, Giovanni Volpe, and Sylvain Gigan. Brownian motion in a speckle light field: tunable anomalous diffusion and selective optical manipulation. Scientific Reports, 4:3936, 2014.
- Pinyu Wu, Rongxin Huang, Christian Tischer, Alexandr Jonas, and Ernst Ludwig Florin. Direct measurement of the nonconservative force field generated by optical tweezers. Physical Review Letters, 103(10):4–7, 2009.
Place: Faraday room, Fysik Origo, Fysik
Time: 26 June, 2018, 15:00