A Step-by-step Guide to the Realisation of Advanced Optical Tweezers

TL;DR

This paper provides a comprehensive, step-by-step guide for constructing advanced optical tweezers, including single-beam, holographic, and speckle configurations, to enhance micro- and nanoparticle manipulation capabilities.

Contribution

It introduces detailed methodologies for building and calibrating complex optical tweezers systems, expanding the experimental possibilities beyond basic setups.

Findings

Successful construction of a home-made single-beam optical tweezers.

Implementation of holographic optical tweezers for multi-particle manipulation.

Development of speckle optical tweezers using random light fields.

Abstract

Since the pioneering work of Arthur Ashkin, optical tweezers have become an indispensable tool for contactless manipulation of micro- and nanoparticles. Nowadays optical tweezers are employed in a myriad of applications demonstrating the importance of these tools. While the basic principle of optical tweezers is the use of a strongly focused laser beam to trap and manipulate particles, ever more complex experimental set-ups are required in order to perform novel and challenging experiments. With this article, we provide a detailed step- by-step guide for the construction of advanced optical manipulation systems. First, we explain how to build a single-beam optical tweezers on a home-made microscope and how to calibrate it. Improving on this design, we realize a holographic optical tweezers, which can manipulate independently multiple particles and generate more sophisticated wavefronts such as Laguerre-Gaussian beams. Finally, we explain how to implement a speckle optical tweezers, which permit one to employ random speckle light fields for deterministic optical manipulation.