Micro-particles with higher refractive index than the surrounding medium irradiated by a laser beam are pushed by optical forces towards places having the highest local optical intensity. These intensity maxima are usually created by focusing a laser beam using a microscope objective with high numerical aperture. A convenient alternative offers usage of light patterns created by an interference of collimated beams. This way tens or hundreds of optical traps are created in a spatially well-organized structure (also called as optical lattice) which is well-suited for studies of quasi-crystalline structures, targeted delivery of living cells or particle sorting and fractionation. Hereby, we investigate theoretically and experimentally properties of optical traps organized in hexagonal, rectangular and calleidoscopic structures created by interference of 3 up to 8 collimated laser beams.

Date Published: 5 December 2014
PDF: 6 pages
Proc. SPIE 9441, 19th Polish-Slovak-Czech Optical Conference on Wave and Quantum Aspects of Contemporary Optics, 944105 (5 December 2014); doi: 10.1117/12.2175933

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 9441:
19th Polish-Slovak-Czech Optical Conference on Wave and Quantum Aspects of Contemporary Optics
Agnieszka Popiolek-Masajada; Waclaw Urbanczyk, Editor(s)