Item Details

title

Confinement and Tracking of Brownian Particles in a Bessel Beam Standing Wave

author

McKell, Chad

abstract

Optical trapping is a useful tool for manipulating microscopic particles and probing the physical interactions of matter. However, previous optical trapping techniques introduced complications for analyzing Brownian particle diffusion in viscous media because they either restricted the particles' motion or trapped the particles too close to a surface. To our knowledge, this thesis presents the first realization of two-dimensional, transverse tracking of Brownian microparticles in multiple, surface-isolated traps. To accomplish this, we used an axicon-generated, zeroth-order Bessel beam standing wave whose parameters were adjusted to allow tight axial confinement and loose transverse confinement of microscopic-sized particles in the central maximum of the Bessel beam. We chose a Bessel beam because its unique non-diffracting and self-healing properties provided distinct advantanges over a Gaussian beam. In particular, a Bessel beam standing wave was shown to produce optical potential wells that are more abundant, uniform, and stable than those of a Gaussian standing wave.

subject

Bessel beam

Brownian

diffusion

optical trapping

optics

standing wave

contributor

Bonin, Keith D (committee chair)

Holzwarth, George (committee member)

Williams, Richard T. (committee member)

date

2016-01-11T09:35:23Z (accessioned)

2018-01-10T09:30:09Z (available)

2015 (issued)

degree

Physics (discipline)

embargo

2018-01-10 (terms)

identifier

http://hdl.handle.net/10339/57431 (uri)

language

en (iso)

publisher

Wake Forest University

type

Thesis