Picosecond Motional Relaxation of Nanoparticles in Femtosecond Laser Trapping

Abstract

Repetitive drag and release dynamics by impnlsive force is characteristic of optical trapping by femtosecond laser pulses. We studied the dynamics utilizing double pulse train and found that trapped polystyrene particles are ejected repetitively from the focal spot and its frequencies become less for longer interval of the pulse trains. The ejection changes drastically in a few-ps interval region, although particles cannot move appreciable distance in such a short time. It means that displacement of particles by a conventional diffusive motion is not dominant and another fast process has an important role in femtosecond pulse trapping. We also revealed that the silica nanoparticles shows a decay at few-ps, indicating that the picosecond decay is not due to a material property but considered to be a general dynamics. We propose that a picosecond relaxation process of inertia force of particles is important for understanding laser trapping dynamics by femtosecond laser pulses.