Simultaneous optical trapping and imaging in the axial plane: a review of current progress

Abstract

Optical trapping has become a powerful tool in numerous fields such as biology, physics, chemistry, etc. In conventional optical trapping systems, trapping and imaging share the same objective lens, confining the region of observation to the focal plane. For the capture of optical trapping processes occurring in other planes, especially the axial plane (the one containing the z-axis), many methods have been proposed to achieve this goal. Here, we review the methods of acquiring the axial-plane information from which axial plane trapping is observed and discuss their advantages and limitations. To overcome the limitations existing in these methods, we developed an optical tweezers system that allows for simultaneous optical trapping and imaging in the axial plane. The versatility and usefulness of the system in axialplane trapping and imaging are demonstrated by investigating its trapping performance with various optical fields, including Bessel, Airy, and snake-like beams. The potential applications of the reported technique are suggested to several research fields, including optical pulling, longitudinal optical binding, tomographic phase microscopy (TPM), and super-resolution microscopy.

Generation of axially splitted ultra-long multiple optical needles/optical tubes using generalized cylindrical vector Bessel Gaussian beam phase modulated by annular Walsh function filter

“…Moreover, the FWHM and DOF achieved here is much higher than the our previously proposed methods . [62][63][64] These focal structures found potential applications in optical recording, optical trapping, optical microscopy etc [1][2][3][4][5][6][7]. Fig.…”

“…The values such as FWHM and DOF are same like as values of optical needles in the optical segment for radially polarized beam. These multiple optical needles and optical tubes have potential applications in multiple optical trapping and recording, multiple optical manipulation, high resolution microscopy etc [1][2][3][4][5][6][7]. Fig.…”

“…Axially splitted sub wavelength multiple focal spots/holes with extended depth are useful for many potential application such as optical super resolution microscopy, optical trapping &manipulation of multiple particles, high density optical data storage etc [1][2][3][4][5][6][7]. Recently, two extreme case of generalized cylindrical vector (radial& azimuthal) beams with different types of amplitude and phase filters are used to produce the axially splitted multiple focal spots/holes.…”

Optical manipulation: advances for biophotonics in the 21st century

“…The simultaneous trapping and imaging in the axial plane is one of the main advances made since the turn of the century in the field of optical trapping combined with advanced imaging. This has potential implications in several research fields including tomographic phase microscopy (TPM) and super-resolution (SR) microscopy, 117 which are very useful in the study of biological samples. TPM is a label-free technique to measure the 3D RI of an object from which morphological and biochemical information, and from this the dynamics of biological samples, can be extrapolated.…”

Cubic-Phase Metasurface for Three-Dimensional Optical Manipulation

“…In recent years, Airy beams have attracted large interest in various applications, including the generation of curved plasmonic channels [ 27 ], micromachining of curved profiles [ 28 ], and 3D super-resolution imaging [ 29 , 30 ]. In optical manipulation techniques, particularly, Airy beams exhibit unique optical properties and have been employed for optical snow blowers [ 14 ] and optical conveyors [ 17 , 31 ], including guiding, pushing, and trapping. Traditionally, an Airy beam is generated by a dynamic diffractive element, such as a spatial light modulator, deformable mirror, or digital micro-mirror device (DMD), which suffers from bulky size, redundant diffraction orders, and low transmission efficiency.…”