Two-laser optical tweezers with a blinking beam

•A novel method of measuring local viscosity of fluid is proposed.•Two-laser holographic optical tweezers and their applications are presented.•A new method of measuring weak optical trap stiffness is described.

We report on a two-laser holographic optical tweezers setup and present its two major advantages over single-laser one. First, the trap stiffness of a weak trapping beam can be measured with a considerable accuracy. Second, a novel method of examining local viscosity of fluid is proposed. Both measurements are performed based on forcing the oscillations of a microscopic polystyrene bead placed between two optical traps. The two beams are generated by separate laser sources and therefore their trapping power can vary. Moreover, a stronger trap 'blinks', modulated by an electronic shutter. The blinking frequency can be precisely adjusted to the experimental conditions, which results in high accuracy of the measurements.