• Accepted Paper

Optofluidic resonance of a liquid microjet excited by laser-induced fluorescence

Haoyu Wang, Qisheng Chen, Haoyu Liu, Zhibei Wang, Lihao Gao, Xinyan Zhao, and Weiwei Deng

Phys. Rev. Applied - Accepted 21 October, 2026

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/wqdl-jr96

Abstract

We report a novel optofluidic resonance phenomenon in a liquid microjet triggered by non-coherent laser-induced fluorescence (LIF). By doping a ∼ 100 μm radius ethanol microjet with Rhodamine 6G dye and exciting it with a continuous-wave (CW) laser, the intrinsically random Rayleigh-Plateau instability is transformed into a highly ordered, satellite-free droplet generation process. We demonstrate that the jet effectively acts as a liquid optical fiber, trapping and transmitting the LIF emission upstream via total internal reflections. Such ordered jet breakup triggered by LIF is termed as optofluidic resonance. This resonating behavior is driven by a synergistic opto-thermal mechanism. The pulsating LIF exerts a localized optical radiation pressure combined with a temperature-dependent thermal Marangoni stress to seed periodic nanometer scale perturbations at the origin of the jet. These initial perturbations are subsequently amplified by macroscopic hydrodynamic instabilities. This work may provide a new non-contact way for precise microfluidic manipulation.

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