Using Optical Tweezers to Simultaneously Trap, Charge, and Measure the Charge of a Microparticle in Air
Optical tweezers are widely used as a highly sensitive tool to measure forces on micron-scale particles. One such application is the measurement of the electric charge of a particle, which can be done with high precision in liquids, air, or vacuum. We experimentally investigate how the trapping laser itself can electrically charge such a particle, in our case a ∼1 μm SiO_{2} sphere in air. We model the charging mechanism as a two-photon process which reproduces the experimental data with high fidelity.
Authors
- Grégory David (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2129-3266)
- Andrea Stoellner
- Scott Waitukaitis (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2299-3176)
- James Millen (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6950-3461)
- Zhanybek Alpichshev
- Hisao Ishii (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7584-2769)
- Ryota Shibuya
- Dmytro Rak (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7531-7772)
- Ruth Signorell (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1111-9261)
- Isaac C. D. Lenton (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5010-6984)
- Caroline Müller (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5836-5350)
- Artem G. Volosniev (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0393-5525)
Institutions
- Institute of Science and Technology Austria (AT)
- Chiba University (JP)
- King's College London (GB)
- Aarhus University (DK)
- Slovak Academy of Sciences (SK)
- ETH Zurich (CH)
- Institute of Experimental Physics of the Slovak Academy of Sciences (SK)
Publication Details
- Journal
- Physical Review Letters
- Published
- 2025-10-02
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.1103/5xd9-4tjj
- Citations
- 2
- Primary Topic
- Orbital Angular Momentum in Optics
- Type
- article
- Field-Weighted Citation Impact
- 2.49