Lecture

Optical Tweezers: Basics and Applications

Graph Chat

Chat with Graph Search

Ask any question about EPFL courses, lectures, exercises, research, news, etc. or try the example questions below.

DISCLAIMER: The Graph Chatbot is not programmed to provide explicit or categorical answers to your questions. Rather, it transforms your questions into API requests that are distributed across the various IT services officially administered by EPFL. Its purpose is solely to collect and recommend relevant references to content that you can explore to help you answer your questions.

In course

CH-417: Optical methods in chemistry

Introduction and application of photon based tools for chemical sciences: from basic concepts to optical and x-ray lasers ...

Description

This lecture covers the basics of optical tweezers, including the principles of ray optics, wave optics, and the use of beams and cavities. It also delves into the application of optical tweezers in microscopy, manipulation, and spectroscopy. The lecture further explores the interaction of X-rays with matter, diffraction, imaging, and spectroscopy. The instructor emphasizes the importance of understanding the wave description of light and Maxwell's equations in dielectric media, leading to a discussion on the alignment of molecules using laser pulses. The lecture concludes with experimental setups for optical tweezers and Coulomb explosion imaging, showcasing data examples of ion images recorded under different conditions.

Instructor

Christoph Bostedt

Teaching & PhD PhD Students Eloisa Florence Manetti, Wenyi Jiang, Hankai Zhang, Loïc Lucien Cédric Bassement, Silas Strebel, Eliot Jermann Past EPFL PhD Students Jonas Knurr, Ningchen Yang Courses Optical methods in chemistry CH-417 Introduction and application of photon based tools for chemical sciences: from basic concepts to optical and x-ray lasers Physical Chemistry Seminar 1: Trends CH-643 Students can learn about the broader research in Phyiscal Chemistry and broaden

Official source

Related concepts (32)

Geometrical optics

Geometrical optics, or ray optics, is a model of optics that describes light propagation in terms of rays. The ray in geometrical optics is an abstraction useful for approximating the paths along which light propagates under certain circumstances. The simplifying assumptions of geometrical optics include that light rays: propagate in straight-line paths as they travel in a homogeneous medium bend, and in particular circumstances may split in two, at the interface between two dissimilar media follow curved paths in a medium in which the refractive index changes may be absorbed or reflected.

Physical optics

In physics, physical optics, or wave optics, is the branch of optics that studies interference, diffraction, polarization, and other phenomena for which the ray approximation of geometric optics is not valid. This usage tends not to include effects such as quantum noise in optical communication, which is studied in the sub-branch of coherence theory. Physical optics is also the name of an approximation commonly used in optics, electrical engineering and applied physics.

Optics

Optics is the branch of physics that studies the behaviour and properties of light, including its interactions with matter and the construction of instruments that use or detect it. Optics usually describes the behaviour of visible, ultraviolet, and infrared light. Because light is an electromagnetic wave, other forms of electromagnetic radiation such as X-rays, microwaves, and radio waves exhibit similar properties.

Diffraction

Diffraction is the interference or bending of waves around the corners of an obstacle or through an aperture into the region of geometrical shadow of the obstacle/aperture. The diffracting object or aperture effectively becomes a secondary source of the propagating wave. Italian scientist Francesco Maria Grimaldi coined the word diffraction and was the first to record accurate observations of the phenomenon in 1660.

X-ray optics

X-ray optics is the branch of optics that manipulates X-rays instead of visible light. It deals with focusing and other ways of manipulating the X-ray beams for research techniques such as X-ray crystallography, X-ray fluorescence, small-angle X-ray scattering, X-ray microscopy, X-ray phase-contrast imaging, and X-ray astronomy. Since X-rays and visible light are both electromagnetic waves they propagate in space in the same way, but because of the much higher frequency and photon energy of X-rays they interact with matter very differently.

Related lectures (47)

Principles of Lasers: Optical Tweezers

Explores the principles of lasers, including lasing transitions and optical tweezers, with applications in various fields.

Diffraction: Theory and Formulas

Covers the theory and formulas of diffraction, including Fresnel and Fraunhofer diffraction, integral theorems, and geometric methods.

Optical Principles

Covers fundamental principles of ray and wave optics, including reflection, interference, diffraction, and spectroscopy.

Applications using stimulated scatterings

Explores applications of stimulated scatterings in optical fibers, including power probing, distributed sensing, slow & fast light, and optical storage.

Optical Methods in Chemistry