The Effect of Optical Tweezers
Authors
Mao, Jingjing
Enge, Daniel
Hong, Howie
Rajan, Neil
Date
2023-05-19
Type
technical report
Language
en
Keyword
Alternative Title
Abstract
In this project, we create an optical trap for microscopic polystyrene spheres by constructing optical
tweezers using a laser with a wavelength of 532nm. The potential well created by the optical trap is
analogous to that of a harmonic oscillator. This allows us to define and measure the stiffness of the trap,
which is dependent on the power of the laser. Using the position data obtained by a CCD camera, we can
measure the stiffness of the trap using both the equipartition theorem and the mean squared distance
method. We measured the trap stiffness for various laser power. Our result shows that the stiffness of
the optical trap does not increase linearly with the power of the laser.