Micromanipulation of high and low indices microparticles using a microfabricated double axicon

The technique of transferring the momentum of optical potential landscapes to control the kinetics of the microscopic particles has recently gained considerable interest. In this paper, we report the optical micromanipulations of high and low indices particles using an optical trapping system integrated with a micron-sized double axicon. A double axicon is used to generate a self-imaged bottle beam, a propagation invariant beam. The transverse intensity profile of the self-imaged bottle beam oscillates along the propagation axis embedding three-dimensional intensity-null points, which are unique to conventional beams used in tweezers-like Gaussian, Laguerre-Gaussian, and Bessel beams. By imaging different portions of a self-imaged bottle beam, the same tweezers system can easily be modified for trapping applications of high and low indices microparticles. Furthermore, the self-reconstruction property of a self-imaged bottle beam is numerically studied and the minimum self-reconstruction distance of an obstructed self-imaged bottle beam is determined. (c) 2006 American Institute of Physics.