Sharath Ananthamurthy

Fast shuttling of ions in a scalable Penning trap array

We report on the design and testing of an array of Penning ion traps made from printed circuit board. The system enables fast shuttling of ions from one trapping zone to another, which could be of use in quantum information processing. We describe simulations carried out to determine the optimal potentials to be applied to the trap electrodes for enabling this movement. The results of a preliminary experiment with a cloud of laser cooled calcium ions demonstrate a round-trip shuttling efficiency of up to 75%.

Laser induced rotation of trapped chiral and achiral nematic droplets

We study the response of optically trapped achiral and chiralized nematic liquid crystal droplets to linear as well as circular polarized light. We find that there is internal dissipation in rotating achiral nematic droplets trapped in glycerine. We also demonstrate that some chiralized droplets rotate under linearly polarized light. The best fit to our data on chiralized droplets indicates that rotational frequency of these droplets with radius R is approximately proportional to 1/R 2, rather than to 1/R 3.

A DUAL OPTICAL TWEEZER FOR MICRORHEOLOGY OF BACTERIAL SUSPENSIONS

A dual optical tweezer has been built around an inverted microscope with high numerical aperture objective (N.A 1.4). The setup is versatile and can be used both as a single and a dual tweezer, and in the dual mode, enables us to optically trap two micron-sized latex beads within a few microns from each other in solution. Using this setup, we report measurements of the microrheological parameters of Pseudomonas fluorescens and Bacillus subtilis bacterial suspensions. We study the variation of viscoelastic moduli of these bacterial suspensions as a function of their cell count in solution. A comparison with inactive bacteria of corresponding cell count enables us to characterize the activity of the bacterial samples in terms of an average force that the bacteria exerts on the trapped bead. This work paves way for studies of interesting nonlinear rheological phenomena at small length scales.

Construction of an optical tweezer for nanometer scale rheology

The optical tweezer is a versatile set-up that can be employed in a wide variety of studies investigating the microscopic properties of materials. In particular, this set-up has in recent times been gainfully employed in probing rheological properties of materials that exhibit viscoelasticity. These measurements can provide data at the micro and nanometer scales, not normally accessible by rheometers that are used for measurements on bulk samples. In this work we describe a single laser beam optical tweezer set-up, which is built around an inverted open microscope. The trapped polystyrene particle bead’s deviation from the trap potential minimum is monitored by laser backscattering technique and the bead position measured by a quadrant photodiode detector. Additionally, a provision is made for video microscopic studies on dispersed beads using a CCD camera. A single particle microrheological experiment that can be performed using the set-up is described with relevant calculations.

Loading Detection and Number Estimation of an Electron Plasma in a Penning Trap

A quadrupole Penning trap for spectroscopy and investigations of non-neutral plasmas was designed and built. In this work we provide details of the trap design and a discussion of a simple design and procedure for convenient electron loading from an aligned filament. Electrons from thermionic emission which form a low-energy diffuse beam are trapped in weak magnetic fields. They are detected through a non-destructive electronic detection scheme, the details of which are discussed. The detection signal is diminished when the electron beam energy is increased while the electron flux is kept constant. This is explained by considering the energy shift in the distribution function of electrons emitted from the filament and entering the trap. We present a calculation of the number of trapped electrons from the shape of the detection signal. This calculation, based on a model of a driven damped harmonic oscillator to describe the axial motion of the electrons, compares favourably with the numbers obtained by measurements of the space charge induced shift in the trap potential.

Two particle tracking and detection in a single Gaussian beam optical trap.

We have studied in detail the situation wherein two microbeads are trapped axially in a single-beam Gaussian intensity profile optical trap. We find that the corner frequency extracted from a power spectral density analysis of intensity fluctuations recorded on a quadrant photodetector (QPD) is dependent on the detection scheme. Using forward- and backscattering detection schemes with single and two laser wavelengths along with computer simulations, we conclude that fluctuations detected in backscattering bear true position information of the bead encountered first in the beam propagation direction. Forward scattering, on the other hand, carries position information of both beads with substantial contribution from the bead encountered first along the beam propagation direction. Mie scattering analysis further reveals that the interference term from the scattering of the two beads contributes significantly to the signal, precluding the ability to resolve the positions of the individual beads in forward scattering. In QPD-based detection schemes, detection through backscattering, thereby, is imperative to track the true displacements of axially trapped microbeads for possible studies on light-mediated interbead interactions.

Conical Fresnel zone lens for optical trapping

The phase of a negative axicon is combined with that of a Fresnel zone lens (FZL) to obtain an element labelled as conical FZL, which can generate a focused ring pattern at the focal plane of the FZL. The phase integration is achieved by modifying the location and width of zones of FZL in accordance with the phase variation of the negative axicon. The element was designed for a high power laser with a wavelength of 1064 nm, focal length and diameter of conical FZL of 30 mm and 8 mm respectively and for a ring diameter of 50 μm. The element was fabricated using photolithography. The pattern was transferred from the resist layer to the borosilicate glass plates by dry etching to achieve an etch depth of 1064 nm. The etch depth measured using confocal microscope was 1034 nm at the central part and 930 nm for the outermost part of the device with a maximum error of 12.5% at the outermost part and 3% at the central part. The element was used in an optical trapping experiment. The ring pattern generated by the conical FZL was reimaged into the trapping plane using a tightly focusing microscopic objective. Polystyrene beads with diameters of 3 μm were suspended in deionized distilled water at the trapping plane. The element was found to trap multiple particles in to the same trap.

Scattering polarization in the presence of magnetic and electric fields

The polarization of radiation by scattering on an atom embedded in combined external quadrupole electric and uniform magnetic fields is studied theoretically. Limiting cases of scattering under Zeeman effect and Hanle effect in weak magnetic fields are discussed. The theory is general enough to handle scattering in intermediate magnetic fields (Hanle-Zeeman effect) and for arbitrary orientation of magnetic field. The quadrupolar electric field produces asymmetric line shifts and causes interesting level-crossing phenomena either in the absence of an ambient magnetic field or in its presence. It is shown that the quadrupolar electric field produces an additional depolarization in the Q/I profiles and rotation of the plane of polarization in the U/I profile over and above that arising from magnetic field itself. This characteristic may have a diagnostic potential to detect steady state and time varying electric fields that surround radiating atoms in Solar atmospheric layers.