Hysteresis and balance of backaction force on dielectric particles photothermally mediated by photonic nanojet

Abstract

Reversible control over the microparticle motion using light excites interesting applications in optofluidics, microswimmers, artificial optical matter, and biomedical engineering. The dielectric microspheres swim towards the near infrared pulsed laser in response to the backaction force mediated by photonic nanojet. Hereby, we report that the backaction force exhibits hysteretic behaviour owing to the distinguishable responses of the temperature rise inside the nanojet and the temperature rise of the liquid ensemble. Accordingly, the magnitude of backaction force at the same laser power varies between power increase and decrease stages. In order to develop multidimensional manipulation tool, we studied the possibility of using lasers with different spatiotemporal profiles to mediate the backaction force, and developed the counterpropagating beam scheme for reversible control of the particle motion directions. We further harness the hysteresis to reverse the direction of backaction force on dielectric particles in presence of a constant force from a counter-propagating beam with broadband supercontinuum spectrum. In contrast to the microsphere caught in the single beam gradient trap, the microsphere encounters augmented Brownian motion at higher balanced power level. The microsphere would eventually escape from the common region of the paired beams, enabling high throughput morphology analysis for cancer cell classification, biopsy, and diagnosis.

Keywords

• cancer cell
• counter-propagating beams
• hysteresis
• optical force
• photonic nanojet
• supercontinuum laser