Autonomous swinging of a lipid tubule under stationary irradiation by a Nd3+:YAG laser.
A micrometer-sized lipid tubule exhibits oscillatory swinging motion under stationary irradiation by a Nd(3+):YAG laser ( lambda = 1064 nm). By choosing an appropriate optical path through an objective lens, the laser can be split into dual beams focused on the same position. Using this splitting, a lipid tubule can be shown to exhibit bistability with regard to the orientation of trapping. Driven by a temperature gradient induced by local photon heating, the trapped lipid tubule shows oscillatory motion between two possible orientations. This oscillatory phenomenon of the lipid tubule is thought to represent the breaking of time-translational symmetry under thermodynamically open conditions.
Nomura
Shin-ichiro M
SM
Department of Physics, Graduate School of Science, Kyoto University & CREST, Kyoto 606-8502, Japan.
Harada
Takahiro
T
Yoshikawa
Kenichi
K