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Optical force-induced nonlinearity and self-guiding of light in human red blood cell suspensions

Rekha Gautam,Yinxiao Xiang,Josh Lamstein,Yi Liang,A. Bezryadina,Guo Liang,T. Hansson,B. Wetzel,D. Preece,Adam White,M. Silverman,S. Kazarian,Jingjun Xu,R. Morandotti,Zhigang Chen

Published 2019 in Light: Science & Applications

ABSTRACT

Osmotic conditions play an important role in the cell properties of human red blood cells (RBCs), which are crucial for the pathological analysis of some blood diseases such as malaria. Over the past decades, numerous efforts have mainly focused on the study of the RBC biomechanical properties that arise from the unique deformability of erythrocytes. Here, we demonstrate nonlinear optical effects from human RBCs suspended in different osmotic solutions. Specifically, we observe self-trapping and scattering-resistant nonlinear propagation of a laser beam through RBC suspensions under all three osmotic conditions, where the strength of the optical nonlinearity increases with osmotic pressure on the cells. This tunable nonlinearity is attributed to optical forces, particularly the forward-scattering and gradient forces. Interestingly, in aged blood samples (with lysed cells), a notably different nonlinear behavior is observed due to the presence of free hemoglobin. We use a theoretical model with an optical force-mediated nonlocal nonlinearity to explain the experimental observations. Our work on light self-guiding through scattering bio-soft-matter may introduce new photonic tools for noninvasive biomedical imaging and medical diagnosis. New photonic tools for medical imaging and manipulation could exploit the non-linear behavior of laser light in human blood. Usually when light enters biological fluids it is quickly scattered, losing its power, but recent studies show that some cell suspensions induce non-linear responses in laser beams, such as self-focusing, which enhance the penetration of light. Rekha Gautam at San Francisco State University and an international team of co-workers have shown that a laser beam shining through red blood cell suspensions can become ‘self-trapped’, so that scattering is reduced and the beam retains its power. Crucially, the non-linearity depends on the osmotic conditions and age of the samples, implying that the technique could be used to diagnose diseases such as sickle cell anaemia or malaria which affect the size and shape of blood cells.

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