SGER: Dynamics, Identification and Control of an Optical Tweezer System

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It is proposed to carry out an experimental and theoreticalprogram of research related to the dynamical modelling,identification and feedback control of optical tweezers. By theproper use of feedback control and identification techniques, we plan to increase the accuracy and bandwidth of the optical tweezer as a sensor by orders of magnitude. The testbed applicationfor these techniques is to use the tweezer to sense, inreal time, mechanical or chemical changes to a biologicalmolecule; for example, the mechanical ``unzipping'' of DNA.Current techniques for such sensing are limited by the effects ofthermal noise (Langevin forces) and the internal dynamics ofthe molecule itself. Techniques are proposed that incorporatedynamical models of the molecule as well as recursive system identificationalgorithms to estimate the parameters of trap-molecule interactionin the presence of significant background noise. The proposedresearch program will consist of developing appropriate models formolecule-trap interaction, feedback control and identification,and experimental testing of the algorithms on the existing andoperational optical tweezer instrument in the PIs laboratory atUCSB.