Autonomous swinging of a lipid tubule under stationary irradiation by a Nd³⁺:YAG laser

Autonomous swinging of a lipid tubule under stationary irradiation by a Nd³⁺:YAG laser was studied. The laser was found to be capable of splitting into dual beams focused on the same position by choosing an appropriate optical path through an objective lens. A lipid tubule could be shown to exhibit bistability with regard to the orientation of trapping using this splitting. The trapped lipid tubule, driven by a temperature gradient induced by local photon heating, showed oscillatory motion between two possible orientations.