Recent Advances on Tunable Vortex Beam Devices for Biomedical Applications
Journal Title: Biomedical Journal of Scientific & Technical Research (BJSTR) - Year 2018, Vol 9, Issue 3
Abstract
The optical vortex beams carrying orbital angular momentum (OAM) recently have unveiled great potential to be widely applied in advanced biomedicine, e.g. manipulating and assembling DNA, detecting biomolecule, organic illumination, single-cell nanosurgery, etc. However, it is an everlasting challenge to produce the proper vortices devices for corresponding applications. To this end, the tunable properties of OAM beams need to be produced. The spectrum-tunable property is related to the tuning of the response of target molecules. The OAM-tunable property can control the number and distribution of target particles. Moreover, the polarization-tunable property can be used to reduce photodamage. Hereinafter, we give a prompt review of the recent advances on tunable vortex beam devices for biomedical applications. Optical vortex beams are at the heart of a number of novel research directions, which are the light beams with a helical wavefront carrying orbital angular momentum (OAM), giving rise to a phase singularity at the center of light field [1-3]. In 2004, X Zhuang [4] unveiled that a DNA molecule can be manipulated by a vortex beam which plays a role of optical tweezer. Moreover, she discovered that the position, rotation, even condensation of the target DNA or other biomolecule can be flexibly controlled so as to do biomolecules assembling engineering via tuning the corresponding vortex beam [5-8]. With more researches on the interaction between matters and optical OAM hatched in recent years, vortex beams were gradually developing more and more powerful advanced applications in biomedicine [9]. Utilizing the coupling between the chirality of molecule and the chirality of OAM of vortex beams [10-12], one can detect, select and sort the target molecules with special chirality or enantiomorphism, offering an alternative to existing bio-sensing technologies [13,14]. With the development of the tunable vortex beams in nanometersized subcellular structures [15-17] and the optimization of the polarization-tunable property [18-20], the optical tweezers developed the functionality of transporting subcellular organelles and exerting less photodamage on the trapped particle, which has been used in advanced single-cell nanosurgery [21]. In 2006, F Tamburini et al. [22] unveiled that the Rayleigh criterion limit (diffraction limit) can be overcome with optical vortices in imaging process, which extend the novel super-resolution imaging technology using vortex beams. Then, researchers reported that the resolution in this super-resolution imaging can be further improved by using optical vortex lattices i.e. the vortex beam with multiple singularities and singularity arrays [23]. Moreover, through tuning the polarization structure of the vortex beam, the resolutions of the superresolution imaging technology can be close to 100 nm, which is capable of clearly observing biological cells [24,25]. Therefore, the development of large-range tunable vortex beams can largely improve the super-resolution imaging for the application of biomedical photonics. In this year, a breakthrough in vortices generation is that the vortex beam can be generated in organic material [26], which has great potential to develop novel organic illumination technologies and further be used in microimaging subcellular dynamics in multicellular organisms [27] in the future. According to the above review, the development of tunable vortex beams largely promoted the related biomedical applications. In contrast to the conventional fundamental mode beam, the vortex beams have spatial structures with structured OAM and polarization properties. Thus, besides the conventional wavelength-tunable property, its tunable properties also include OAM-tunable and polarization-tunable properties. All these three kinds of tunable properties provided distinct directions for improving the related biomedical applications. Therefore, it is meaningful to investigate the vortex beams devices with more powerful tunable properties. For the wavelength- and OAM-tunable vortex beams devices, recent advances can be divided into two categories, single-singularity topological charge tuning and multiple singularities distribution tuning. The former one will be discussed first. Although the technologies for wavelength-tunable and OAM-tunable lasers are existed for a long time, yet the generation of wavelength and OAM simultaneously tuning lasers is a cutting-edge topic. In 2016, W Zhang et al. [28] developed a method for the optical vortex generation with wavelength tunability via an acousticallyinduced fiber grating (AIFG) driven by a radio frequency source. By tuning the frequency of RF driving signal, topological charge of the generated optical vortex can be converted to 0~±1ℏ within the wavelength range 1540 nm - 1560 nm. However, the OAM tuning range is limited to 0~±1ℏ, leading to scant applications. In 2017, V Lyubopytov et. al. [29] expand the OAM tunable range to 0~3ℏ by using a new on-chip micro-component – tunable Micro-ElectroMechanical-System (MEMS)-based Fabry-Perot filter integrated with a spiral phase plate. In the same year, Q Liu et al. [30] reported a design of a wavelength- and OAM-tunable vortex beam in Er:YAG laser where the tunable parameters are 8.4nm range of wavelength and 0~±2ℏ OAM. In early 2018, our group [31,32] presented a dual-off-axis pumping scheme in Yb:CaGdAlO4 (Yb:CALGO) lasers with external mode converter to generate wavelength- and OAMtunable vortex beams, with wavelength-tunable range across 10 nm and a large OAM-tunable range of 0~±15ℏ, which for the first time breaks ten-level OAM range in wavelength- and OAM-tunable vortex beams to the best of our knowledge. The whole system is free of extra tuning devices and the light source is simply structured and easy to implement on a relatively low cost.
Authors and Affiliations
Yijie Shen, Xilin Yang, Ruoyang Qi, Zhensong Wan, Xing Fu, Mali Gong
Keywords
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- EP ID EP586840
- DOI 10.26717/BJSTR.2018.09.001801
- Views 165
- Downloads 0
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