Development of a fast position-sensitive laser beam detector

Isaac Chavez; Rongxin Huang; Kevin Henderson; Ernst-Ludwig Florin; Mark G Raizen

doi:10.1063/1.3002422

Development of a fast position-sensitive laser beam detector

Rev Sci Instrum. 2008 Oct;79(10):105104. doi: 10.1063/1.3002422.

Authors

Isaac Chavez¹, Rongxin Huang, Kevin Henderson, Ernst-Ludwig Florin, Mark G Raizen

Affiliation

¹ Center for Nonlinear Dynamics and the Department of Physics, University of Texas at Austin, Austin, Texas 78712, USA. chavez@physics.utexas.edu

PMID: 19044743
DOI: 10.1063/1.3002422

Abstract

We report the development of a fast position-sensitive laser beam detector. The detector uses a fiber-optic bundle that spatially splits the incident beam, followed by a fast balanced photodetector. The detector is applied to the study of Brownian motion of particles on fast time scales with 1 A spatial resolution. Future applications include the study of molecule motors, protein folding, as well as cellular processes.