Articolo in rivista, 2008, ENG, 10.1109/JSTQE.2007.912910

A novel approach to fiber-optic tweezers: Numerical analysis of the trapping efficiency

Minzioni, Paolo; Bragheri, Francesca; Liberale, Carlo; Di Fabrizio, Enzo; Cristiani, Ilaria

CNISM; University of Pavia; Magna Graecia University of Catanzaro

We present a novel all-fiber optical tweezer (OT) for biological applications. The tweezer is based on a new approach relying on total internal reflection in an annular core fiber or into a fiber bundle. The proposed device, whose trapping efficacy has been recently demonstrated experimentally, is extremely promising, also because optical manipulation and analysis functions can be easily added to the tweezer basic structure, leading to the realization of a powerful biotool. In this paper, a detailed numerical analysis of the structure properties and of its efficiency is carried out in the Mie regime. Moreover, by defining a new parameter to evaluate the trapping efficiency, we perform a comparison between the proposed tweezer structure and a standard OT based on a strongly focused Gaussian beam.

IEEE journal of selected topics in quantum electronics 14 (1), pp. 151–157

Keywords

optical fiber cable, optical fiber devices, optical trapping, optical tweezer (OT)

CNR authors

Bragheri Francesca

CNR institutes