Mechanical analysis of the optical tweezers in time-sharing regime

Time-sharing optical tweezers is a versatile technique to realize multiple traps for manipulating biological cells and macromolecules. It has been based on an intuitive hypothesis that the trapped viscoelastic object does not "sense" blinking of the optical beam. We present a quantitative analysis using mechanical modeling and numerical simulation, showing that the local stress and strain are jumping all the time and at all locations with the jumping amplitude independent of the recovery time of the viscoelastic material and the jumping frequency. Effects of the stress and strain jumping on the object deformation and the internal energy dissipation are analyzed.