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  • Open Access

Optical centrifuge for nanoparticles

Peiyao Xiong, Kit Ka Kelvin Ho, J. M. H. Gosling, M. Rademacher, and P. F. Barker*

  • *Contact author: p.barker@ucl.ac.uk
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Phys. Rev. Research 7, 043204 – Published 21 November, 2025

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/ylw9-22jj

Abstract

We study theoretically the creation of an optical centrifuge for the controlled rotation of levitated nanorotors within an optical tweezer. The optical centrifuge's motion is simulated by rapidly rotating the linear polarization of the tightly focused optical field used to form an optical trap. We show that nanorotors, formed by anisotropic nanoparticles levitated within a trap, can be accelerated to well-defined rotational rates in excess of 100 MHz over durations of hundreds of microseconds. The initial conditions required for stable acceleration, based on optical trap properties and the anisotropic susceptibility of the nanorotor are established and confirmed by numerical simulations. We also present initial experiments that have developed tools for the rapid angular acceleration of the polarization vector of the linearly polarized beam that is required to create the centrifuge. We show that over acceleration durations in the 100μs range, high rotational speeds could be achieved in modest vacuum.

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Outline

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Phys. Rev. Research 7, 043204– Published 21 November, 2025
  • Received 14 July 2025
  • Accepted 14 October 2025
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Published by the American Physical Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the published article's title, journal citation, and DOI.

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