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Optical levitation and trapping of a micro-optic inclined end-surface cylindrical spinner
Applied Optics
|March 22, 2008
Abstract:
Cylindrical micro-objects with inclined end surfaces have been observed to be optically trapped in a focused laser beam and to rotate about the beam's propagation direction. A simplified vector model is developed that accounts for the observed effect; the enhanced ray-optics model is used to simulate the behavior of time evolution for the cylindrical object in the beam. Experimental laser trap configurations are presented, along with a video image sequence of the cylinder's precession.
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