Optical tweezers and fluid characteristics of an optical rotator with slopes on the surface upon which light is incident and a cylindrical body

Abstract

The characteristics of the optical trapping force, optical torque, and viscous drag force for a newly proposed cylindrical optical rotator are analyzed. The optical trapping force and torque are evaluated by use of a ray optics model for both parallel and focused laser beam illumination. The drag force is calculated from computational fluid dynamics to be the sum of the components of both the pressure and the shearing stress on all the surfaces of the rotator. We analyze the rotation rate by balancing the optical torque with the drag force. A cylindrical optical rotator is expected to rotate at a high speed because of its highly efficient generation of optical torque and its small viscous drag force.

Optically driven micromachines: progress and prospects

“…[12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26][27] This work both stimulated and benefitted from more general work on optical rotation and optical torque, most notably from the pioneering work of Les Allen [28][29][30][31][32] and work carried out at The University of Queensland, 7, 10, 33-39 the University of St Andrews [40][41][42][43][44][45][46][47] and the University of Glasgow, [48][49][50][51][52][53][54][55][56][57][58][59] and elsewhere.…”

Optical angular momentum transfer to microrotors fabricated by two-photon photopolymerization

“…The production, trapping and rotation of such structures has been demonstrated by a number of groups around the world (Gauthier 2001, Galajda and Ormos 2001, Higurashi et al 1994, Ukita and Kanehira 2002, Ukita and Nagatomi 2003. However, what is required is the development of initial designs and their evaluation, prior to further engineering and optimization.…”

Coupled dipole method to compute optical torque: Application to a micropropeller

“…One of the first experiments was carried out by Higurashi et al in 1994, 21 and Gauthier developed one of the first theoretical models in 1995. [24][25][26][27] The computation methods in Refs. [24][25][26][27] The computation methods in Refs.…”