Advanced methods for near field and femtosecond optical micromanipulation : Visiting Fellowship Application for Professor Min Gu

Light can move matter at the microsocpi scale rather like a tractor beam. This method works because particles and biological objects like cells act like small lenses that bend the light and change the direction the direction of flow. From Newton's law we can see that a change in direction is accompanied by a force. This force pulls particle to the brightest region of the light.In this proposal we will investigate technqiues that use short pulse lasers that give very short bursts of high intense light rather than a continuous beam (cw) of light for trapping. The high burst of energy means we can access processes that we normally could not yet the avearge power over time stays the same so we can move the objects as with a CW beam. Finally we investigate applications where the particles are held all on a large glass substrate using total internal reflection: rather like when you look out from the bottom of a swimming pool but see the reflection of the bottom. This method offers us the chance to make large 2D arrays of trapped objects and cells