Published in

American Physical Society, Physical Review Letters, 1(108)

DOI: 10.1103/physrevlett.108.018101

Links

Tools

Export citation

Search in Google Scholar

Optically Trapped Gold Nanoparticle Enables Listening at the Microscale

Journal article published in 2012 by Alexander Ohlinger, Andras Deak ORCID, Andrey A. Lutich, Jochen Feldmann
This paper is available in a repository.
This paper is available in a repository.

Full text: Download

Green circle
Preprint: archiving allowed
Green circle
Postprint: archiving allowed
Green circle
Published version: archiving allowed
Data provided by SHERPA/RoMEO

Abstract

We explore a new application of optical tweezers for ultrasensitive detection of sound waves in liquid media. Position tracking of a single gold nanoparticle confined in a three-dimensional optical trap is used to readout acoustic vibrations at a sound power level down to -60  dB, causing a ∼90  μeV increase in kinetic energy of the nanoparticle. The unprecedented sensitivity of such a nanoear is achieved by processing the nanoparticle's motion in the frequency domain. The concept developed here will enable us to access the interior of biological microorganisms and micromechanical machines not accessible by other microscopy types.