Building on conventional dual-fiber optical trap systems, we have developed a multichannel dual-fiber optical trap chip that is simple and low-cost. This chip features three channels, enabling simultaneous capture of three individual microspheres within a liquid environment. With each microsphere being captured by opposing optical fibers at 45-mW power, the measured axial optical trap stiffnesses of each channel were 0.4626, 0.7184, and 0.6467 pN/μm, respectively, whereas the transverse optical trap stiffnesses were 1.7794, 1.6885, and 1.4560 pN/μm. This chip may have various applications in the field of microfluidics, such as optical stretching, viscosity coefficient measurements, cell analysis, and micromixing.
The displacement measurement of the levitated particle is essential in optical tweezers in vacuum. However, crosstalk between the radial axes often occurs and will deteriorate the measurement precision. Common methods are proposed to align the coordinate systems of the motion and measurement, but few have considered the polarizations of the trapping beam and possible crosstalk control. Here single SiO2 particles with a diameter of 200nm are trapped in the single-beam optical tweezers in vacuum. Balanced detectors and D-shaped mirrors are used to measure the particle's displacements. As expected, the crosstalk coefficient can be periodically changed with the control of the linear polarization of the trapping beam. When the polarization direction is along Y axis, the crosstalk on the displacement x from the other radial axis can reach to infinity. When the polarization direction is along X axis, the crosstalk is eliminated. For comparison, crosstalk elimination is also achieved by an inserted Dove prism to rotate the beam along the propagation axis. The crosstalk elimination by polarization control is simpler, but it needs linear-polarized beam and will slightly change the particle’s resonant frequencies. The crosstalk elimination by beam rotations will need at least two Dove prisms, but it is adapted to most common conditions and does not change the resonant frequencies. The research is useful for the feedback cooling and the precise measurement of the physical quantities in future.
In the traditional optical traps, the displacement of the trapped particle is usually detected by measuring the forward scattered (FS) light and back-scattered (BS) light. However, in the dual-beam fiber-optic traps, it is difficult to using the FS light and BS light to achieve the displacement detection. As mentioned in our previous work, the side-scattered light of the trapped particle can also be used for displacement detection and achieve a large linear range of the displacement detection. In this paper, we furtherly use a four-fiber bundle, rather than traditional quadrant photodiode (QPD) to collect the side-scattered light from trapped particle in the dual-beam fiber-optic trap. The power of the collected light in the cores of the fiber bundle is monitored by multiple detectors, and later operated for differential signals to denote the displacement of the particle. To achieve better displacement detection performance, we have analyzed the influence of core radius r, numerical aperture NA, and core interval Δ based on the simulations using a geometrical optics model. The results show that, high sensitivity and large linear range can be realized by optimizing these parameters. The proposed detection method is easy to integrate into a dual-beam fiber-optic trap, which provides a pathway for optical trapping systems with all fiber devises.
KEYWORDS: Filtering (signal processing), Particles, Electronic filtering, Signal processing, Optical filters, Optical tweezers, Systems modeling, Motion models, Interference (communication), Signal to noise ratio
The cooling and quantum control of the optically trapped particles is a hot topic in quantum frontier research. One of the key steps is using Kalman filter to extract the particle’s motion from noisy signals. Time delays of the Kalman filters are found in the process of signal extraction. Here the particle displacements based on the parameters of actual optical trapping systems are simulated, and the time delays of the Kalman filtering process are observed by changing the oscillation periods and the relaxation time for stabilization. The results indicate that Kalman filtering can effectively compress the noises in the displacement signal and thus improve the signal-to-noise ratio. Furthermore, as smaller the signal frequency is, larger time delays are observed in the process. It shows that the time delays should be noticed and compensated. Meanwhile, it is shown that the consuming time for signal stabilizations in the filtering process and the phase of the original signal, neither of which affects the filtering effect. These simulation results are our initial explorations for the cooling of optically trapped particles in vacuum. It would provide possible help to deal with the delay mismatch resulted from Kalman filtering and for the cooling of the optically trapped particles.
Optical tweezers (OTs) are an important tool for the viscosity measurements in microrheology, and passive techniques have the features of being simple and need no external force generations. Current passive methods using OT always first calibrate the potential stiffness and then do parameter fittings to obtain the viscosity. Here, we introduced and demonstrated a passive viscosity estimation method for low-viscous microfluids using OTs without stiffness calibration and parameter fitting. By Brownian trajectory tracking of single trapped bead, the viscosity coefficients of water and NaCl solutions are quickly obtained with small deviations (typical <10 % ) from the reference values. Besides, we introduce estimations for the commonly used voltage-to-displacement conversion factor, and the consistency check between the estimations and calibrations is used to represent the estimation quality. The whole process is very convenient for automatic processing. Further matrix operations are proposed and tested, which are expected to be integrated with holographic OTs and optical fiber traps for distributed multidimensional measurement.
We present a method for measuring the van der Waals force between two microspheres based on photonic force microscopy. We trapped a microsphere as probe by optical tweezers. The restricted Brownian motion of Gaussian distribution could be found in this system. The vibration center of the probe was affected by the van der Waals force when a target microsphere was closer to the probe. We measured the vibration center of the probe at different separation between the pair of microspheres. Based on this, the measurement of the van der Waals force between the two microspheres was realized with a high precision. Our method can realize the direct measurement of van der Waals force without using the variation rules of it. This method results in a simple structure, would not damage the sample, and can be suitable for the surface of any shape. It is general and has a wide range of applications in other fields of micro-force measurement.
Since microcavity Kerr soliton combs have spectrum which can exceed one octave, high repetition rate and potential for on-chip integration, the dissipative Kerr soliton generation in microresonators has been widely studied in recent years. Although microcavity soliton combs have been demonstrated in microcavities of different materials and shapes, it is still challenging for soliton generation due to positive thermal effects. In this paper, a sol-gel processed SiO2-CaF2 hybrid toroid microresonator is numerically investigated. Based on the calculation and simulation model we developed, this CaF2 coated SiO2 microresonator may avoid thermal effects and thermo-mechanical oscillations. Compared to organic coatings for thermal compensation in previous studies, it is a more promising platform for soliton generation.
We present a precise passive frequency difference stabilization scheme for the Y-shaped cavity dual-frequency laser. A two-stage thermostat and a precision steady current circuit were designed to stabilize the temperature and discharge current of the laser. The laser relative frequency difference drift rate is stabilized within 0.011% at room temperature. The result shows an improvement of two orders of magnitude over the stress-induced birefringence closed-loop control method. This scheme will further improve the accuracy of acceleration and precision force measurement. Moreover, the scheme shows the great potential in industrial applications because of the low cost and good environmental adaptability. In addition to the temperature change, we found that the mode repulsion also affects the stability of the frequency difference.
We presented an optical system that could measure the viscosity coefficient of liquid in a micro-area. The orbital rotation of a polystyrene microsphere was realized by a dual-beam fiber-optic trap with a transverse offset. The rotation rate increased with the viscosity coefficient of the environmental medium. On this basis, the viscosity coefficients of ethanol solutions with different concentrations were measured successfully. The volume of solution samples was less than 1 μL. This provides a basis for the viscosity measurement of rare liquid or enchylema, which is of great significance for biological applications such as cell characteristics and reaction dynamics.
We propose a new and versatile way for optical orbital rotation of microscopic sized multi-particle arrays in a transversely misaligned dual-fiber optical trap. A PDMS(Polydimethylsiloxane) chip is designed to adjust the transverse offset distance between two fibers. It is possible to control the orbital rotation frequency and perimeter by varying the transverse offset distance without external influences. Experimental results show that there is a threshold value, beyond which the particles will rotate in a certain trajectory. The threshold values of the transverse offset required to initiate orbital rotation was found to be different for different number particle arrays. The proposed optical manipulation technique has been verified to be useful for cell sorting, optical binding and assembly of microstructures.
The angular velocity of a vaterite microsphere spinning in the optical trap is measured using rotational Doppler effect. The perfectly spherical vaterite microspheres are synthesized via coprecipitation in the presence of silk fibroin nanospheres. When trapped by a circularly polarized beam, the vaterite microsphere is uniformly rotated in the trap center. The probe beams containing two Laguerre–Gaussian beams of opposite topological charge l = ± 7, l = ± 8, and l = ± 9 are illuminated on the spinning vaterite. By analyzing the backscattered light, a frequency shift is observed scaling with the rotation rate of the vaterite microsphere. The multiplicative enhancement of the frequency shift proportion to the topological charge has greatly improved the measurement precision. The reliability and practicability of this approach are verified through varying the topological charge of the probe beam and the trapping laser power. In consideration of the excellent measurement precision of the rotation frequency, this technique might be generally applicable in studying the torsional properties of micro-objects.
Optical trap has become a powerful tool of biology and physics, since it has some useful functions such as optical rotator, optical spanner and optical binding. We present the translational motions in the transverse plane of a 4.4μm-diameter vaterite particle which is optically trapped in low pressures utilizing the Monte-Carlo method. We find that the air pressure around the microparticle plays an important part in the determination of dynamics of the trapped particle. According to the energy equipartition theorem, the position fluctuations of the optically trapped particle satisfy Maxwell-Bolzmann distributions. We present the features of particles’ displacements and velocities changing with air pressures in detail, and find that the modulation of the trap stiffness makes a higher position variance. The mechanical quality factor Q larger than 10 induces a high peak of power spectral density. Our research presents a powerful tool towards further discovery of dynamical characteristics of optically trapped Brownian particles in low air pressures.
Optical traps have been widely used in a large variety of applications ranging from biophysics to nano-sciences. More than one microscopic object can be captured in an optical trap. In the practical application, it is always necessary to distinguish and control the number of captured objects in the optical trap. In this paper, a novel method has been presented to distinguish the number of trapped microspheres by measuring the intensity of back signal. Clear descent of the back signal has been observed when a microsphere is captured in the center of optical trap. The relative coupling efficiency of back signal decreases as the number of captured microspheres increases both in experiment and theory. This method contributes to miniaturization and integration of applied systems due to getting rid of the imaging system, and is generally applicable to the area of nanoparticle trapping.
Controllable rotation of the trapped microscopic objects has traditionally been thought of one of the most valuable optical manipulation techniques. The controllable rotation of a microsphere chain was achieved by the dual-beam fiber-optic trap with transverse offset. The experimental device was made up of a PDMS chip housing two counter-propagating fibers across a microfluidic flow channel. Each fiber was coupled with different laser diode source to avoid the generation of coherent interference, both operating at a wavelength of 980 nm. Each fiber was attached to a translation stage to adjust the transverse offset distance. The polystyrene microspheres with diameter of 10 μm were chosen as the trapped particles. The microfluidic flow channel of the device was flushed with the polystyrene microspheres solution by the mechanical fluid pump. At the beginning, the two fibers were strictly aligned to each other. Five microspheres were captured as a chain parallel to the axis of the fibers. When introducing a transverse offset to the counter-propagating fibers by adjusting the translation stages, the microsphere chain was observed to rotating in the trap center. When the offset distance was set as 9 μm, the rotation period is approximately 1.2s. A comprehensive analysis has been presented of the characteristics of the rotation. The functionality of rotated chain could be extended to applications requiring microfluidic mixing or to improving the reaction speed in a localized environment, and is generally applicable to biological and medical research.
We build numerical models of dual-waveguide trap with rough and tilted endfaces using both the finite element method. The optical field distribution of waveguide trapping house with rough and tilt endfaces is simulated and analyzed. The results shows that rough endfaces cause the incident beam scattered and the tilted endfaces make incident beam refracted. According to optical field distribution, axial and transversal optical trapping forces are calculated. When endfaces roughness increase, both the axial and transversal trapping forces decrease, meaning trapping depth decreased. The transversal equilibrium positions move around unpredictably, off center. The stiffness and width of optical trap change little. When endfaces tilt angles increase, both the axial and transversal trapping forces decrease, meaning trapping depth decreased. The transversal equilibrium positions move along minus transversal axis. It is no obvious change in stiffness and width of optical trap.
Design a chip for flexible multifunction optical micro-manipulation based on elastomeric materials-PDMS. We realized the different motion types of microspheres, including stably capture, spiral motion and orbital rotation, by adjusting the input voltage of piezoceramics designed in PDMS Chip. Compared to conventional techniques, this PDMS chip based method does not require special optical properties of the microspheres to be manipulated. In addition, the technique was convenient and precise for dynamical adjustment of motion types without external influences. From these results, we verify that this multifunctional optical micro-manipulation technique of PDMS elastomeric materials can find potential applications for optical manipulation, including cost-effective on-chip diagnostics, optical sorting and optical binding, etc.
A new method and its principle are presented for measuring the each component gas pressures in Rubidium (Rb) by the analysis of absorption spectral profile. The experiment system is set up to obtain Rb absorption spectra. And then each component gas pressures in atom vapor cell is estimated. First, the relationships between transmittance of probe light, atom density and absorption cross section are introduced, and the factors which influence the absorption spectral profile and methods to measure gas pressures are given. Second, the frequency-dependence curves of transmittance and the absorption spectra are obtained through tuning the laser frequency through the Rb D1 transition. Finally, the gas pressures of Rb, N2 and He are achieved, through fitting absorption spectral profile referring to half-width and minimum transmittance value of absorption spectra. The experiment results show that gas pressures in Rb atom vapor cell can be accurately measured by absorption spectrometric methods, which will be helpful for the following study of atom vapor cell. The gas pressures of N2 and He measured by the experiments are well matched with design values. The Rb gas pressure is 30%~50% less than the saturated vapor pressure and the suppression may be due to the adsorption of the cell surfaces coated with octadecyltrichlorosilane (OTS) film.
KEYWORDS: Gyroscopes, Digital signal processing, Error analysis, Signal processing, Signal detection, Analog electronics, Optical engineering, Field programmable gate arrays, Optical filters
Although a sinusoidal bias method is introduced to avoid working in the death band for a majority of time, the mechanical dithered ring laser gyro (RLG) still encounters information loss when crossing the zero rate point. A novel lock-in error correction method is proposed which can pick up the lost information and remove the random walk error radically. The lost information at the zero rate crossing can be expressed by such parameters as the phase and phase acceleration of a beat frequency signal. These parameters are sampled every time the phase crosses the zero rate point, and two correction trains are formed. Using the minimum variance method, the correction trains are properly scaled to compensate the output of RLG. Experiment shows that even in a bad working condition, this method can achieve satisfactory results.
We present a compact parallel optical correlator (CPOC) based on joint transform correlation manipulation that can be used for various applications. Two innovative approaches are adopted to make
the whole system more compact with a volume of 17×5×3cm3. Two demo systems, i.e., guidance of guided missile and on-orbit rendezvous and docking have been established. The experimental result showed that CPOC system currently operates at approximately 300 Hz and can accurately determine the positioning information when a 1024×768 pixel spatial light modulator (SLM) is employed.
Optical correlation manipulation presents great potential in future machine vision systems, which
can be used in a large variety of application fields. Nevertheless, how to extract the tracking signal
effectively and fast for the feedback system is still an open question. In the present paper, we present
novel target recognition and tracking approach in optical correlator system. The tracking signal is
extracted by using genetic algorithm. In this way, a photoelectric detector with short response time
can be employed in the system instead of digital camera, the tracking signal can be extracted by
iteratively evaluating the signal detected by the photoelectric detector until converge. Numerical
simulations were performed to validate the validity of the approach presented in the manuscript.
Access to the requested content is limited to institutions that have purchased or subscribe to SPIE eBooks.
You are receiving this notice because your organization may not have SPIE eBooks access.*
*Shibboleth/Open Athens users─please
sign in
to access your institution's subscriptions.
To obtain this item, you may purchase the complete book in print or electronic format on
SPIE.org.
INSTITUTIONAL Select your institution to access the SPIE Digital Library.
PERSONAL Sign in with your SPIE account to access your personal subscriptions or to use specific features such as save to my library, sign up for alerts, save searches, etc.