Giant Colloidal Diffusivity on Corrugated Optical Vortices

A single colloidal sphere circulating around a periodically modulated optical vortex trap can enter a dynamical state in which it intermittently alternates between freely running around the ring-like optical vortex and becoming trapped in local potential energy minima. Velocity fluctuations in this randomly switching state still are characterized by a linear Einstein-like diffusion law, but with an effective diffusion coefficient that is enhanced by more than two orders of magnitude.