The tug-of-war behavior of a Brownian particle in an asymmetric double optical trap with stochastic fluctuations

FeiLong Jia-PeiZhu

A Brownian particle optically trapped in an asymmetric double potential surrounded by a thermal bath was simulated. Under the cooperative action of the resultant deterministic optical force and the stochastic fluctuations of the thermal bath, the confined particle undergoes Kramers transition, and oscillates between the two traps with a probability of trap occupancy that is asymmetrically distributed about the midpoint. The simulation results obtained at different temperatures indicate that the oscillation behavior of the particle can be treated as the result of a tug-of-war game played between the resultant deterministic force and the random force. We also employ a bistable model to explain the observed phenomena.

DOI

Direct measurements of colloidal hydrodynamics near flat boundaries using oscillating optical tweezers

Chungil Ha, H.D. Ou-Yang, Hyuk Kyu Pak 

We studied the hydrodynamic interaction between a colloidal particle close to flat rigid boundaries and the surrounding fluid using oscillating optical tweezers. A colloidal particle located near walls provides a model system to study the behavior of more complex systems whose boundaries can be modeled as effective walls, such as a blood tube, cell membrane, and capillary tube in bio-MEMS. In this study, we measure the hydrodynamic interaction directly without using the Stokes-Einstein relation. Two different cases are studied: a colloidal sphere near a single flat wall and a colloidal sphere located at the midplane between two flat walls. The colloidal hydrodynamics is measured as a function of the distance between the particle and the walls, and is compared with the theoretical results from well-define hydrodynamics approximations. 

DOI