Exploring unconventional capabilities of holographic tweezers

We report an investigation of manipulation and trapping capabilities of polarization holographic tweezers. A polarization gradient connected with a modulation of the ellipticity shows an optical force related to the polarization of the light that can influence optically isotropic particles. While in the case of birefringent particles an unconventional trapping in circularly polarized fringes is observed. A liquid crystal emulsion has been adopted to investigate the capabilities of the holographic tweezers. The unusual trapping observed for rotating bipolar nematic droplets has suggested the involvement of the lift hydrodynamic force responsible of the Magnus effect, originating from the peculiar optical force field. We show that the Magnus force which is ignored in the common approach can contribute to unconventional opto-hydrodynamic trapping and manipulation.