Since their invention in 1986, optical tweezers have become a popular manipulation and force measurement tool in cellular and molecular biology. However, until recently there has not been a sophisticated model for optical tweezers on trapping cells in the ray-optics regime. We present a model for optical tweezers to calculate the optical force upon a spherically symmetric multilayer sphere representing a common biological cell. A numerical simulation of this model shows that not only is the magnitude of the optical force upon a Chinese hamster ovary cell significantly three times smaller than that upon a polystyrene bead of the same size, but the distribution of the optical force upon a cell is also much different from that upon a uniform particle, and there is a 30% difference in the optical trapping stiffness of these two cases. Furthermore, under a small variant condition for the refractive indices of any adjacent layers of the sphere, this model provides a simple approximation to calculate the optical force and the stiffness of an optical tweezers system.

© 2006 Optical Society of America

You do not have subscription access to this journal. Citation lists with outbound citation links are available to subscribers only. You may subscribe either as an OSA member, or as an authorized user of your institution.

Contact your librarian or system administrator
or
Log in to access OSA Member Subscription

You do not have subscription access to this journal. Cited by links are available to subscribers only. You may subscribe either as an OSA member, or as an authorized user of your institution.

Contact your librarian or system administrator
or
Log in to access OSA Member Subscription

You do not have subscription access to this journal. Figure files are available to subscribers only. You may subscribe either as an OSA member, or as an authorized user of your institution.

Contact your librarian or system administrator
or
Log in to access OSA Member Subscription

You do not have subscription access to this journal. Article level metrics are available to subscribers only. You may subscribe either as an OSA member, or as an authorized user of your institution.

Contact your librarian or system administrator
or
Log in to access OSA Member Subscription

Related Journal Articles

• Optical trapping of metallic particles by a fixed Gaussian beam (OL)
• Image enhancement in near-field scanning optical microscopy with laser-trapped metallic particles (OL)
• Optical trapping of nanoparticles and microparticles by a Gaussian standing wave (OL)
• Characterization of Trapping Force on Metallic Mie Particles (AO)
• Trapping and manipulation of low-index particles in a two-dimensional interferometric optical trap (OL)

Related Conference Papers

• Dynamically Adjustable Annular Laser Trapping for Sperm Chemotaxis Study
• Optical Trapping, Manipulation, and Sorting of Cells and Colloids in Microfluidic Systems with Diode Laser Bars
• Pulsed Optical Tweezers for Levitation and Manipulation of Stuck Biological Particles
• Interferometric Optical Sieve for Micro-Particle Segregation
• Observation of Orbital Angular Momentum Transfer to Particles Trapped in a Mathieu Beam