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

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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
McKell, Chad (author)
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
title
Confinement and Tracking of Brownian Particles in a Bessel Beam Standing Wave
type
Thesis

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