Stiff traps using super-oscillating optical beams

Brijesh Kumar Singh; Harel Nagar; Yael Roichman; Ady Arie

doi:10.1117/12.2325027

7 September 2018 Stiff traps using super-oscillating optical beams

Brijesh Kumar Singh, Harel Nagar, Yael Roichman, Ady Arie

Proceedings Volume 10723, Optical Trapping and Optical Micromanipulation XV; 1072303 (2018) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2325027
Event: SPIE Nanoscience + Engineering, 2018, San Diego, California, United States

Abstract

When an optical lens is illuminated by a plane wave, the generated focal spot is given by the Abbe diffraction limit. However, arbitrary small spots, surrounded by additional lobes, can be obtained by illuminating the lens with a suitable light pattern. This is a manifestation of super-oscillation (SO), since the far field intensity pattern is band-limited by the ratio of the lens numerical aperture and the wavelength, but nevertheless the light beam at the focal plane can oscillate locally at much higher frequency. Here, we investigate a systematic method to structure the small lobes of SO function, by using Gaussian, Hermite-Gaussian, Laguerre-Gaussian and Airy functions. After experimentally realizing the subwavelength focusing of these structured super-oscillating optical beams we showed their capabilities to achieve high localization of nano-meter sized particles and observed unprecedented localization accuracy and trapping stiffness, significantly exceeding those provided by standard diffraction limited beams. Further, we envisage that the method of structuring super-oscillating functions shown here can be used in other fields, e.g. STED microscopy, nonlinear frequency conversion, lithography, plasmonics as well as in the time domain for structuring light pulses for supertransmission and for time-dependent focusing

Conference Presentation

Citation Download Citation

Brijesh Kumar Singh, Harel Nagar, Yael Roichman, and Ady Arie "Stiff traps using super-oscillating optical beams", Proc. SPIE 10723, Optical Trapping and Optical Micromanipulation XV, 1072303 (7 September 2018); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2325027

ACCESS THE FULL ARTICLE

INSTITUTIONAL
Select your institution to access the SPIE Digital Library.

SELECT YOUR INSTITUTION

PERSONAL
Sign in with your SPIE account to access your personal subscriptions or to use specific features such as save to my library, sign up for alerts, save searches, etc.

PERSONAL SIGN IN

No SPIE Account? Create one

PURCHASE THIS CONTENT

SUBSCRIBE TO DIGITAL LIBRARY

50 downloads per 1-year subscription

Members: $195

Non-members: $335 ADD TO CART

25 downloads per 1 - year subscription

Members: $145

Non-members: $250 ADD TO CART

PURCHASE SINGLE ARTICLE

Includes PDF, HTML & Video, when available