Probing of pair interaction of magnetic microparticles with optical tweezers

Magnetic interaction of paramagnetic Brownian submicron-sized particles is studied by optical tweezers technique. Correlation analysis allows one to extract magnetic interaction of two particles 0.4 μm in size, which are optically trapped at the distance of 3 μm one from each other and placed in a static magnetic field of 30 Oe, from the background of their Brownian motion. The magnetic interaction force is estimated to be of approximately 100 fN. Two configurations of the mutual orientation of the magnetic field vector and the line connecting two centers of optical traps are used in the experiment. For field vector orientation parallel/perpendicular to this line, the magnetic interaction is detected by the cross-correlation function increase/decrease in comparison with the absence of magnetic field on the time scales of 1 ms.