Observation of Larmor-like precession of a single birefringent particle due to spin-dependent forces in tilted optical tweezers

Fuente: arXiv
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Autori principali: Roy, Sauvik, Ghosh, Nirmalya, Banerjee, Ayan, Gupta, Subhasish Dutta
Natura: Preprint
Pubblicazione: 2024
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author Roy, Sauvik
Ghosh, Nirmalya
Banerjee, Ayan
Gupta, Subhasish Dutta
author_facet Roy, Sauvik
Ghosh, Nirmalya
Banerjee, Ayan
Gupta, Subhasish Dutta
contents We observe clear precessional motion of highly birefringent liquid crystal (LC) particles trapped in a spherically aberrated optical trap which is built around a tilted refractive index stratified medium. For input circularly polarized light, the breaking of azimuthal symmetry induced by the tilt leads to an asymmetric intensity distribution in the radial direction near the trap focal plane, which - in combination with the spin-orbit conversion effects for input circularly polarized light - results in non-uniform canonical and spin momentum densities in those regions. In addition, while the canonical momentum remains always oriented towards the axial direction, the spin momentum reverses direction along spatial loops in the radial direction. As a consequence, the total momentum precesses around the canonical momentum vector along elliptical spatial loops - akin to a Larmor-like precession of magnetic moment (total momentum in our case) around a magnetic field (canonical momentum). We probe this precession experimentally using the single trapped LC particles - with the direction of precession determined by the helicity of the input light and the precession frequency varying linearly with the laser power. Our experimental results are validated by numerical simulations of the system where we employ the Debye-Wolf theory for tight focusing in the presence of a tilted stratified media.
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id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2402_07638
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Observation of Larmor-like precession of a single birefringent particle due to spin-dependent forces in tilted optical tweezers
Roy, Sauvik
Ghosh, Nirmalya
Banerjee, Ayan
Gupta, Subhasish Dutta
Optics
We observe clear precessional motion of highly birefringent liquid crystal (LC) particles trapped in a spherically aberrated optical trap which is built around a tilted refractive index stratified medium. For input circularly polarized light, the breaking of azimuthal symmetry induced by the tilt leads to an asymmetric intensity distribution in the radial direction near the trap focal plane, which - in combination with the spin-orbit conversion effects for input circularly polarized light - results in non-uniform canonical and spin momentum densities in those regions. In addition, while the canonical momentum remains always oriented towards the axial direction, the spin momentum reverses direction along spatial loops in the radial direction. As a consequence, the total momentum precesses around the canonical momentum vector along elliptical spatial loops - akin to a Larmor-like precession of magnetic moment (total momentum in our case) around a magnetic field (canonical momentum). We probe this precession experimentally using the single trapped LC particles - with the direction of precession determined by the helicity of the input light and the precession frequency varying linearly with the laser power. Our experimental results are validated by numerical simulations of the system where we employ the Debye-Wolf theory for tight focusing in the presence of a tilted stratified media.
title Observation of Larmor-like precession of a single birefringent particle due to spin-dependent forces in tilted optical tweezers
topic Optics
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2402.07638