Control of an Optical Trap

Implemented a PCI FPGA based system to control two acousto-optic deflectors for time sharing of a single laser. The time shared laser generates an optical ‘trap’ by ping-ponging the focus of the laser back and forward between two points. This trap can be used to capture individual muscle myosin filaments and is used as a force transducer to measure forces from the filament in the piconewton range. The data is transferred via DMA to the LabVIEW code running on the Windows Operating system where it is displayed and recorded for further analysis of the forces and motion generation of myosin filaments.