Tailored optical fibre traps for enhanced particle manipulation

Radiation pressure, the force exerted by photons, has applications in cooling atoms, propelling spacecraft using solar sails and in microscopic particle trapping and manipulation. In this talk I will describe optical trapping and discuss single beam optical traps (optical tweezers), optical fibre traps and waveguide traps. Optical tweezers make use of a laser beam that is tightly focused by a high numerical aperture, enabling contactless particle manipulation in three dimensions. I’ll describe work carried out over the last year and a half towards developing 3D particle manipulation that does not require a laser beam to be directed through a high numerical aperture microscope objective. We are aiming to create ‘optical tweezers on a chip‘ using novel optical fibres so that optical tweezing of single cells can be easily realised under any microscope.