The main activities of the group are targeted to the advanced exploitation of lasers of which beams can be focused to the spot of a size as small as a few micrometers. The main researched topics are as follows:

• Optical forces are used for trapping, manipulation, rotation, sorting, levitation, and sorting of micrometer and nanometer objects according to their size (including living cells) in liquids or vacuum.
• Spectral characteristics of scattered light are exploited using Raman spectroscopy in order to characterize chemical composition of samples (mainly for living organisms)
• Energy density of the laser beam is used for two photon polymerization to create microstructures (with details as low as 100 nm) from photopolymers
• Minimalization of the sample volumes used for light interaction so that better spatial resolution and faster acquisition of data in analytical optical methods is achieved - e.g. for monitoring of biochemical processes in droplets. This also contributes to the imaging techniques such as holographic fiber endoscopy.

We are currently dealing with following issues:

• Levitation and cooling of nano and microobjects in vacuum to experimentaly describe transitient boundary between classical and quantum physics so that our findings can be used in emerging quantum technologies.
• Self-arrangement of the objects to opticaly bind structures so that light can create functional microstructures
• Characterization of polymer production in living microorganisms to optimize their cultivation conditions
• Characterization of bacterial and yeast colonies as well as single cells using Raman spectroscopy. This in turn enables characterization of different species in a few minutes and cells reaction to antibiotics on the order of hours
• Optical monitoring of biochemical reactions in optofluidic systems to optimize chemical reaction parameters for biotechnological productivity enhancement
• Holographical fibre imaging for in-vivo exploitation in endoscopes with the thickness of about the width of the human hair

Significant results obtained:

• First experimental demonstration of the Tractor beam and its use for transportation, sorting and self-arrangement of microobjects
• Different methods based on optical sorting according to the size of the objects
• Characterization of lipids in algae cells for on-line sorting
• Demonstration of one and multi–dimensional self-arrangement of microobjects in laser beam
• Optical conveyor belt
• Compact optical tweezers (on market supplied by Meopta company)