Influence of nonconservative optical forces on the dynamics of optically trapped colloidal spheres: the fountain of probability.

We demonstrate both experimentally and theoretically that a colloidal sphere trapped in a static optical tweezer does not come to equilibrium, but rather reaches a steady state in which its probability flux traces out a toroidal vortex. This nonequilibrium behavior can be ascribed to a subtle bias of thermal fluctuations by nonconservative optical forces. The circulating sphere therefore acts as a Brownian motor. We briefly discuss ramifications of this effect for studies in which optical tweezers have been treated as potential energy wells.

• Publication year

  2008

• Venue

  Physical Review Letters

• Publication date

  2008-03-11

• Fields of study

  Medicine, Physics

• Identifiers
  DOI 10.1103/PhysRevLett.101.128301arXiv 0804.0730PMID 18851418
• External record

  Open on Semantic Scholar

• Source metadata

  Semantic Scholar, PubMed

• No claims are published for this paper.

• No concepts are published for this paper.

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