Yansheng Liang

Spinning and orbiting motion of particles in vortex beams with circular or radial polarizations

Focusing fields of optical vortex (OV) beams with circular or radial polarizations carry both spin angular momentum (SAM) and orbital angular momentum (OAM), and can realize non-axial spinning and orbiting motion of absorptive particles. Using the T-matrix method, we evaluate the optical forces and torques exerted on micro-sized particles induced by the OV beams. Numerical results demonstrate that the particle is trapped on the circle of intensity maxima, and experiences a transverse spin torque along azimuthal direction, a longitudinal spin torque, and an orbital torque, respectively. The direction of spinning motion is not only related to the sign of topological charge of the OV beam, but also to the polarization state. However, the topological charge controls the direction of orbiting motion individually. Optically induced rotations of particles with varying sizes and absorptivity are investigated in OV beams with different topological charges and polarization states. These results may be exploited in practical optical manipulation, especially for optically induced rotations of micro-particles.

Generation of cylindrical vector beams based on common-path interferometer with a vortex phase plate

Abstract. Cylindrical vector (CV) beams have found increasing applications in physics, biology, and chemistry. To generate CV beams, interferometric technique is popularly adopted due to its flexibility. However, most interferometric configurations for the generation of CV beams are faced with system instability arising from external disturbance, limiting their practical applications. A common-path interferometer for the generation of radially and azimuthally polarized beams is proposed to improve the system stability. The optical configuration consists of a vortex phase plate acting to tailor the phase profile and a cube nonpolarizing beamsplitter to split the input beam into two components with mirror-like spiral phase distribution. The generated CV beams show a high quality in polarization and exhibit a better stability of beam profile than those obtained by noncommon-path interferometric configurations.

Compact multi-band fluorescent microscope with an electrically tunable lens for autofocusing

Autofocusing is a routine technique in redressing focus drift that occurs in time-lapse microscopic image acquisition. To date, most automatic microscopes are designed on the distance detection scheme to fulfill the autofocusing operation, which may suffer from the low contrast of the reflected signal due to the refractive index mismatch at the water/glass interface. To achieve high autofocusing speed with minimal motion artifacts, we developed a compact multi-band fluorescent microscope with an electrically tunable lens (ETL) device for autofocusing. A modified searching algorithm based on equidistant scanning and curve fitting is proposed, which no longer requires a single-peak focus curve and then efficiently restrains the impact of external disturbance. This technique enables us to achieve an autofocusing time of down to 170 ms and the reproductivity of over 97%. The imaging head of the microscope has dimensions of 12 cm × 12 cm × 6 cm. This portable instrument can easily fit inside standard incubators for real-time imaging of living specimens.

Optical trapping force and torque on spheroidal Rayleigh particles with arbitrary spatial orientations.

We investigate the spatial orientation dependence of optical trapping forces and intrinsic torques exerted on spheroidal Rayleigh particles under irradiation of highly focused linearly and circularly polarized beams. It is revealed that the maximal trapping forces and torques strongly depend on the orientation of the spheroid, and the spheroidal particle is driven to be stably trapped at the beam focus with its major axis perpendicular to the optical axis. For a linearly polarized trapping beam, the optical torque is always perpendicular to the plane containing the major axis and the polarization direction of the incident beam. Therefore, the spheroid tends to rotate its major axis along with the polarization direction. However, for a circularly polarized trapping beam, the optical torque is always perpendicular to the plane containing the major axis and the optical axis. What is different from the linear polarization case is that the spheroid tends to have the major axis parallel to the projection of the major axis in the transverse plane. The optical torque in the circular polarization case is half of that in the linear polarization case. These optical trapping properties may be exploited in practical optical manipulation, especially for the nonspherical particles trapping.

Single shot, three dimensional fluorescence microscopy with a spatially rotating point spread function

A wide-field fluorescence microscope with a double-helix point spread function (PSF) is constructed to obtain the specimens three-dimensional distribution with a single snapshot. Spiral-phase-based computer-generated holograms (CGHs) are adopted to make the depth-of-field of the microscope adjustable. The impact of system aberrations on the double-helix PSF at high numerical aperture is analyzed to reveal the necessity of the aberration correction. A modified cepstrum-based reconstruction scheme is promoted in accordance with properties of the new double-helix PSF. The extended depth-of-field images and the corresponding depth maps for both a simulated sample and a tilted section slice of bovine pulmonary artery endothelial (BPAE) cells are recovered, respectively, verifying that the depth-of-field is properly extended and the depth of the specimen can be estimated at a precision of 23.4nm. This three-dimensional fluorescence microscope with a framerate-rank time resolution is suitable for studying the fast developing process of thin and sparsely distributed micron-scale cells in extended depth-of-field.

Single-beam phase retrieval with partially coherent light illumination

A single-beam phase retrieval method with partially coherent illumination is proposed. By using an obverse and reverse iterative (ORI) algorithm, objects can be reconstructed within less time by recording a sequence of diffraction patterns at different axial planes under partially coherent light illumination. Partially coherent light illumination reduces coherent noise and the number of diffraction patterns needed for reconstruction. Thus, the whole process is fast and has high immunity to external perturbation due to the reference-less configuration. Both simulation and experimental results are presented to demonstrate the feasibility of the proposed approach.

Single-beam phase retrieval with partially coherent light

A single-beam iterative phase retrieval method with partially coherent beam is proposed. Reference-less system make it high immunity to environmental disturbance and partially coherent light improve the image quality with low coherent noise.

Simultaneous optical trapping and imaging in axial plane

The exploitation of single objective lens for both trapping and imaging in standard optical trapping system confines the trapping and imaging planes to the focal plane, which hinders the development of optical trapping along axial direction. To break the limitation, we develop an axial-plane optical trapping and imaging setup and demonstrated simultaneous trapping and imaging in axial plane. A modified Gerchberg-Saxton iterative algorithm based on axial-plane Fourier transform is proposed for direct shaping of novel optical traps in axial plane. With the combination of the proposed algorithm and the axial-plane imaging technique, axial-plane holographic optical tweezers is demonstrated and parallel calibration of multiple traps along axial direction is realized. The proposed technique also provides direct visualization of the trapped particles for study on trap performance of various optical fields, including Bessel beams, Airy beams and snake beams.

Aberration correction in holographic optical tweezers using a high-order optical vortex: publisher's note (vol 57, pg 3618, 2018)

This publishers note identifies an error in the author affiliations of Appl. Opt.57, 3618 (2018)APOPAI0003-693510.1364/AO.57.003618.

Aberration correction in holographic optical tweezers using a high-order optical vortex

Holographic optical tweezers are a powerful optical trapping and manipulation tool in numerous applications such as life science and colloidal physics. However, imperfections in the spatial light modulator and optical components of the system will introduce detrimental aberrations to the system, thereby degrading the trapping performance significantly. To address this issue, we develop an aberration correction technique by using a high-order vortex as the correction metric. The optimal Zernike polynomial coefficients for quantifying the system aberrations are determined by comparing the distorted vortex and the ideal one. Efficiency of the proposed method is demonstrated by comparing the optical trap intensity distribution, trap stiffness, and particle dynamics in a Gaussian trap and an optical vortex trap, before and after aberration corrections.