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. Author manuscript; available in PMC: 2011 Mar 17.
Published in final edited form as: Appl Opt. 2009 Nov 10;48(32):6344–6354. doi: 10.1364/AO.48.006344

Fig. 5.

Fig. 5

(Color online) Measurement of the escape force for polystyrene spheres trapped in the optical stretcher. (a) Plot of the sphere position versus time as the sphere is trapped, held, and then pulled out by the viscous drag of fluid flow. The slopes of the lines give the speed of the sphere. (b) Comparison of the theoretical and experimentally determined escape forces required to pull a 7.8 µm polystyrene sphere from the optical stretcher. Fiber separations of 200 and 250 µm and several laser powers were used. Error bars represent the standard error for experiments conducted under similar conditions. The equation of the best-fit line is shown.