Rotation, oscillation and hydrodynamic synchronization of optically trapped oblate spheroidal microparticles

While the behavior of optically trapped dielectric spherical particles has been extensively studied, the behavior of non-spherical particles remains mainly unexplored. In this work we focus on the dynamics of oblate spheroidal particles trapped in a tightly focused elliptically-polarized vortex beam. In our experiments we used polystyrene spheroids of aspect ratio of major to minor axes equal to 2.55 and of a volume equal to a sphere of diameter 1.7μm. We demonstrate that such particles can be trapped in three dimensions, with the minor axis oriented perpendicular to both the beam polarization (linear) and the beam propagation, can spin in a circularly polarized beam and an optical vortex beam around the axis parallel with the beam propagation. We also observed that these particles can exhibit a periodic motion in the plane transversal to the beam propagation. We measured that the transfer of the orbital angular momentum from the vortex beam to the spheroid gives rise to torques one order of magnitude stronger comparing to the circularly polarized Gaussian beam. We employed a phase-only spatial light modulator to generate several vortex beam traps with one spheroid in each of them. Due to independent setting of beams parameters we controlled spheroids frequency and sense of rotation and observed hydrodynamic phase and frequency locking of rotating spheroids. These optically driven spheroids offer a simple alternative approach to the former techniques based on birefringent, absorbing or chiral microrotors.