Theorectical Analysis of Motion of a Microparticle in an Optically Created Cubic Potential

The noise-to-signal transitions are considered as interesting processes in physics as they might transform environmental noise to useful mechanical effects. Previously, we theoretically analyzed stochastic noise-to-signal transition, first passage times, and other stochastic quantities of overdamped Brownian motion of a nanoparticle in the cubic potential. Here we present a feasibility study showing that the cubic potential can be successfully obtained in a pair of overlapping optical tweezers even in the case of a dielectric microparticle having radius comparable to the trapping wavelength.