Self-action of continuous laser radiation and Pearcey diffraction in a water suspension with light-absorbing particles.

Water suspension of light-absorbing nano-sized particles is an example of a medium in which non-linear effects are present at moderate light intensities favorable for optical treatment of organic and biological objects. We study experimentally the phenomena emerging in a thin layer of such a medium under the action of inhomogeneous light field formed due to the Pearcey diffraction pattern near a microlens focus. In this high-gradient field, the light energy absorbed by the particles induces inhomogeneous distribution of the medium refraction index, which results in observable self-diffraction of the incident light, here being strongly sensitive to the medium position with respect to the focus. This technique, based on the complex spatial structure of both the incident and the diffracted fields, can be employed for the detection and measurement of weak non-linearities.

[1]  K. Bliokh,et al.  Internal flows and energy circulation in light beams , 2010, 1011.0862.

[2]  Measurement and modelling of heat transfer in paper coating structures , 2009, Journal of Materials Science.

[3]  S. A. Akhmanov,et al.  REVIEWS OF TOPICAL PROBLEMS: Self-action of wave packets in a nonlinear medium and femtosecond laser pulse generation , 1986 .

[4]  Wieslaw Krolikowski,et al.  Optical guiding of absorbing nanoclusters in air. , 2009, Optics express.

[5]  Norman R. Heckenberg,et al.  Optically driven micromachines: progress and prospects , 2005, SPIE Micro + Nano Materials, Devices, and Applications.

[6]  Chun-ping Zhang,et al.  Position dispersion and optical limiting resulting from thermally induced nonlinearities in Chinese tea liquid. , 1993, Applied optics.

[7]  A. Ashkin.  Acceleration and trapping of particles by radiation pressure , 1970 .

[8]  P Y Wang,et al.  Self-focusing and self-trapping in new types of Kerr media with large nonlinearities. , 1989, Optics letters.

[9]  O V Angelsky,et al.  Circular motion of particles suspended in a Gaussian beam with circular polarization validates the spin part of the internal energy flow. , 2012, Optics express.

[10]  Yoshio Tsunazawa,et al.  Nanoparticle size analysis with relaxation of induced grating by dielectrophoresis. , 2006, Optics express.

[11]  Kishan Dholakia,et al.  Optical manipulation of nanoparticles: a review , 2008 .

[12]  O V Angelsky,et al.  Orbital rotation without orbital angular momentum: mechanical action of the spin part of the internal energy flow in light beams. , 2011, Optics express.

[13]  Simon Hanna,et al.  Orbital motion of optically trapped particles in Laguerre-Gaussian beams. , 2010, Journal of the Optical Society of America. A, Optics, image science, and vision.

[14]  John F Nye,et al.  Evolution from a Fraunhofer to a Pearcey diffraction pattern , 2003 .

[15]  E. W. Stryland,et al.  High-sensitivity, single-beam n(2) measurements. , 1989, Optics letters.

[16]  M J Padgett,et al.  Intrinsic and extrinsic nature of the orbital angular momentum of a light beam. , 2002, Physical review letters.

[17]  M. Soskin,et al.  Dynamic self-diffraction of coherent light beams , 1979 .

[18]  Wieslaw Krolikowski,et al.  Photophoretic manipulation of absorbing aerosol particles with vortex beams: theory versus experiment. , 2009, Optics express.

[19]  Effect of motion of the medium on the photophoresis of hot hydrosol particles , 2006 .

[20]  D. Grier.  A revolution in optical manipulation , 2003, Nature.

[21]  J. Gordon,et al.  Stability of radiation-pressure particle traps: an optical Earnshaw theorem. , 1983, Optics letters.

[22]  R. Khokhlov,et al.  Reviews of Topical Problems: Self-Focusing and Diffraction of Light in a Nonlinear Medium , 1968 .

[23]  O V Angelsky,et al.  Self-diffraction of continuous laser radiation in a disperse medium with absorbing particles. , 2013, Optics express.

[24]  S. Chu,et al.  Observation of a single-beam gradient force optical trap for dielectric particles. , 1986, Optics letters.

[25]  Aleksandr Bekshaev,et al.  Subwavelength particles in an inhomogeneous light field: optical forces associated with the spin and orbital energy flows , 2012, 1210.5730.

[26]  M J Padgett,et al.  Observation of the transfer of the local angular momentum density of a multiringed light beam to an optically trapped particle. , 2003, Physical review letters.

[27]  David McGloin,et al.  Spin-to-orbital angular momentum conversion in a strongly focused optical beam. , 2007, Physical review letters.

[28]  John F Nye,et al.  From Airy rings to the elliptic umbilic diffraction catastrophe , 2003 .

[29]  David G Grier,et al.  Structure of optical vortices. , 2003, Physical review letters.

[30]  C. H. Liu,et al.  Theoretical analysis for photophoresis of a microscale hydrophobic particle in liquids. , 2010, Optics express.

[31]  T. Pearcey,et al.  XXXI. The structure of an electromagnetic field in the neighbourhood of a cusp of a caustic , 1946 .

[32]  O. V. Angelsky,et al.  Scattering of inhomogeneous circularly polarized optical field and mechanical manifestation of the internal energy flows , 2012 .