Abstract:We develop an integrated system of holographic optical trapping and multimodal nonlinear microscopy and perform simultaneous three-dimensional optical manipulation and non-invasive structural imaging of composite soft-matter systems. We combine different nonlinear microscopy techniques such as coherent anti-Stokes Raman scattering, multi-photon excitation fluorescence and multi-harmonic generation, and use them for visualization of long-range molecular order in soft materials by means of their polarized excitation and detection. The combined system enables us to accomplish both, manipulation in composite soft materials such as colloidal inclusions in liquid crystals as well as imaging of each separate constituents of the composite material in different nonlinear optical modalities. We also demonstrate optical generation and control of topological defects and simultaneous reconstruction of their three-dimensional long-range molecular orientational patterns from the nonlinear optical images.

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We report steady-state and time-resolved photoluminescence ͑TRPL͒ measurements on individual GaN nanowires ͑6-20 m in length, 30-940 nm in diameter͒ grown by a nitrogen-plasma-assisted, catalyst-free molecular-beam epitaxy on Si͑111͒ and dispersed onto fused quartz substrates. Induced tensile strain for nanowires bonded to fused silica and compressive strain for nanowires coated with atomic-layer-deposition alumina led to redshifts and blueshifts of the dominant steady-state PL emission peak, respectively. Unperturbed nanowires exhibited spectra associated with high-quality, strain-free material. The TRPL lifetimes, which were similar for both relaxed and strained nanowires of similar size, ranged from 200 ps to over 2 ns, compared well with those of low-defect bulk GaN, and depended linearly on nanowire diameter. The diameter-dependent lifetimes yielded a room-temperature surface recombination velocity S of 9 ϫ 10 3 cm/ s for our silicon-doped GaN nanowires.