Light Streak Tracking of Optically Trapped Thin Microdisks

Nonspherical particles can uniquely probe soft system dynamics. We show that laser tweezers stably trap thin coinlike microdisks in 3D with an edge-on orientation. Scattered light forms a streak that we track using a fast camera to measure the disk’s angular displacement. Linearly polarized tweezers rotationally trap a birefringent disk, and we measure its harmonically bound Brownian rotation over 5 decades in time. Near a surface, the disk exhibits a translational-orientational switchback oscillation. Circularly polarized tweezers rotate the disk and streak, yielding a colloidal lighthouse.