Design of a dual beam optical trap

Abstract

Dual beam optical traps use radiation pressure from two counterpropagating laser beams to manipulate microscopic particles. Typical traps use optical fibers to guide those beams. This thesis proposes a design for the coaxial alignment of optical fibers that allows for the fibers to translate along a common axis while maintaining alignment. Additionally, this design enables the optical fibers and trapping samples to be quickly and easily swapped out for different experiments. A full optical trapping setup was constructed using this design and successfully demonstrated the trapping of multiple polystyrene microspheres.