We report the experimental demonstration of optical stretching of individual bio-concave human red blood cells (RBCs) with one-dimensional jumping optical tweezers. We trapped a RBC in isotonic buffer solution in a conventional stationary single-beam gradient-force optical trap and discretely scanned the trapping beam with an acousto-optic modulator such that the focal point of the trapping beam jumped back-and-forth between two fixed points. At the jumping frequency on the order of a 100 Hz and higher, and the jumping distance in the range of a few microns, the bi-concave RBC was stably trapped and stretched. The elongation of the stretched RBC was measured as a function of the beam-scanning amplitude, and the experimental results were explained qualitatively by a theoretical model.

Three-dimensional dynamic deformation of a red blood cell in a dual-trap optical tweezers is computed with the elastic membrane theory and is compared with the experimental results. When a soft particle is trapped by a laser beam, the particle is deformed depending on the radiation stress distribution whereas the stress distribution on the particle in turn depends on the deformation of its morphological shape. We compute the stress re-distribution on the deformed cell and its subsequent deformations recursively until a final equilibrium state solution is achieved. The experiment is done with the red blood cells in suspension swollen to spherical shape. The cell membrane elasticity coefficient is obtained by fitting the theoretical prediction with the experimental data. This approach allows us to evaluate up to 20% deformation of cell's shape.

We calculate stress distribution on the surface of a spherical cell trapped by two counter propagating beams in the optical stretcher in the ray optics regime. We demonstrate that the local scattering stress is perpendicular to the spherical refractive surface regardless of incident angle, polarization and the reflectance and transmittance at the surface. We explain the apparition of peaks in the stress distribution, which were not revealed in the existing theory. We consider the divergence of the incident beams from the fibers, and express the stress distribution as a function of fiber-to-cell distance. The new theory can predict the cell's deformation more precisely.

We present a numerical method based on the linear elastic membrane theory to compute the morphological deformation of a spherical cell from the photonics stress distribution over the cellular membrane. The method is applied to fit the experimental data for deformation of a spherical human red blood cell trapped and stretched in a fiber-optical dual-beam trap with a single fitting parameter Eh where E is the Young's modulus of elasticity and h is the thickness of the cell membrane. We obtained Eh = (20+/-2)muNm(-1) which is comparable to results reported earlier. This numerical method can be applied in general experimental conditions.

We analyze the trap stiffness and trapping force potential for a nano-cylinder trapped in the optical tweezers against its axial and lateral shift and tilt associated to the natural Brownian motion. We explain the physical properties of the optical trapping by computing and integrating the radiation stress distribution on the nano-cylinder surfaces using the T-matrix approach. Our computation shows that the force stiffness to the lateral shift is several times higher than that to the axial shift of the nano-cylinder, and lateral torque due to the stress on the side-face is 1-2 orders of magnitude higher than that on the end-faces of a nano-cylinder with the aspect ratio of 2 - 20. The torque due to the stress on the nano-cylinder surface is 2-3 orders of magnitude higher than the spin torque. We explain why a nano-cylinder of low aspect ratio is trapped and aligned normal to the trapping beam axis.