Characterization of microparticles with driven optical tweezers

Abstract

We discuss how actively-driven optical tweezers may be used to characterize Brownian microparticles. Two experiments are described in detail. We follow the thermal fluctuations of a charged particle in an oscillatory electric field and demonstrate that charges as low as a few elementary charges can be measured accurately and reproducibly. Secondly, we measure the orientational dynamics of a trapped rotating droplet and use circular polarimetry within optical tweezers to determine in situ birefringence.