Scattering forces in focused light beams push away metallic particles. Thus, trapping metallic particles with conventional optical tweezers, especially those of Mie particle size, is difficult. Here we investigate a mechanism by which metallic particles are attracted and trapped by plasmonic tweezers when surface plasmons are excited and focused by a radially polarized beam in a high-numerical-aperture microscopic configuration. This contrasts the repulsion exerted in optical tweezers with the same configuration. We believe that different types of forces exerted on particles are responsible for this contrary trapping behaviour. Further, trapping with plasmonic tweezers is found not to be due to a gradient force balancing an opposing scattering force but results from the sum of both gradient and scattering forces acting in the same direction established by the strong coupling between the metallic particle and the highly focused plasmonic field. Theoretical analysis and simulations yield good agreement with experimental results.

From the flow of a suspension of micrometer-scale carbon particles, the photoacoustic Doppler shift is observed. As predicted theoretically, the observed Doppler shift equals half of that in Doppler ultrasound and does not depend on the direction of laser illumination. This new physical phenomenon provides a basis for developing photoacoustic Doppler flowmetry, which can potentially be used for detecting fluid flow in optically scattering media and especially low-speed blood flow of relatively deep microcirculation in biological tissue.

This article reports the development of an optical imaging technique, confocal light absorption and scattering spectroscopic (CLASS) microscopy, capable of noninvasively determining the dimensions and other physical properties of single subcellular organelles. CLASS microscopy combines the principles of lightscattering spectroscopy (LSS) with confocal microscopy. LSS is an optical technique that relates the spectroscopic properties of light elastically scattered by small particles to their size, refractive index, and shape. The multispectral nature of LSS enables it to measure internal cell structures much smaller than the diffraction limit without damaging the cell or requiring exogenous markers, which could affect cell function. Scanning the confocal volume across the sample creates an image. CLASS microscopy approaches the accuracy of electron microscopy but is nondestructive and does not require the contrast agents common to optical microscopy. It provides unique capabilities to study functions of viable cells, which are beyond the capabilities of other techniques.light-scattering spectroscopy ͉ submicrometer ͉ native contrast ͉ imaging ͉ refractive index