Physics Commons^™

Orientation Of Optically Trapped Nonspherical Birefringent Particles, Wolfgang Singer, Timo A. Nieminen, Ursula J. Gibson, Norman R. Heckenberg

Dartmouth Scholarship

While the alignment and rotation of microparticles in optical traps have received increased attention recently, one of the earliest examples has been almost totally neglected—the alignment of particles relative to the beam axis, as opposed to about the beam axis. However, since the alignment torques determine how particles align in a trap, they are directly relevant to practical applications. Lysozyme crystals are an ideal model system to study factors determining the orientation of nonspherical birefringent particles in a trap. Both their size and their aspect ratio can be controlled by the growth parameters, and their regular shape makes computational modeling …