Experimental confirmation of the optical-trapping properties of cylindrical objects

A sophisticated modeling program was used recently to predict the trapping and the manipulation properties of elongated cylindrical objects in the foc al region of a high-intensity laser beam. On the basis of the model, the cy linders should align their longest diagonal dimension with the propagation axis of the laser beam and follow the beam when it is displaced transverse to the cylinder's central axis. Experimental confirmation of the cylinder's behavior is presented and confirms the suitability of the enhanced ray-opt ics approach to modeling micrometer-scale objects in optical-trap environme nts. (C) 1999 Optical Society of America.