Optical tweezers toolbox: better, faster, cheaper; choose all three

摘要

Numerical computation of optical tweezers is one path to understanding the subtleties of their underlyingmechanism—electromagnetic scattering. Electromagnetic scattering models of optical trapping can be usedto find the properties of the optical forces and torques acting on trapped particles. These kinds of calculationscan assist in predicting the outcomes of particular trapping configurations. Experimentally, looking at the parameterspace is time consuming and in most cases unfruitful. Theoretically, the same limitations exist butare easier to troubleshoot and manage. Towards this end a new more usable optical tweezers toolbox has beenwritten. Understanding of the underlying theory has been improved, as well as the regimes of applicability of themethods available to the toolbox. Here we discus the physical principles and carry out numerical comparisonsof performance of the old toolbox with the new one and the reduced (but portable) code.© (2012) COPYRIGHT Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers (SPIE). Downloading of the abstract is permitted for personal use only.