Ayan Banerjee

The ‘Light Matter lab’ primarily employs 'optical tweezers' (OT) - where light is tightly focused to sub-micron spot sizes to confine and manipulate single mesoscopic particles by optical dipole or optothermal forces - to study classical light-matter interactions. The research areas in the lab include the spin-orbit interaction of light enabled by tight focusing, stochastic equilibrium and non-equilibrium statistical mechanics and microrheology, optical trapping in air employing photophoretic forces, and microbubble lithography – a patented technology developed in the lab for micro-patterning mesoscopic materials ranging from polymers to metal nano-particles to viruses. The group also works on precision biosensing using bioinspired waveguides and hyperspectral imaging towards space optics instrumentation.

• PhD (Physics), Indian Institute of Science Bangalore, 2005
• MSc (Physics ), Jadavpur University, 1996

• Professor, Department of Physical Sciences, IISER Kolkata, (2018 - )
• Associate Professor, Department of Physical Sciences, IISER Kolkata (2013-2018)
• Assistant Professor, Department of Physical Sciences, IISER Kolkata (2009 - 2013)
• Research Scientist, General Electric India Technology Centre, Bengaluru (2005-2009)

• SPIE Senior Member, 2020

Research Scholars

Ram Nandan Kumar

Biswajit Das

Anisha Majhi

Sauvik Roy

Anita Pahi

Anand Dev Ranjan

Sramana Das

Postdoctoral Fellows

1. Nonmonotonic skewness of currents in nonequilibrium steady states, Sreekanth K. Manikandan, Biswajit Das, Avijit Kundu, Raunak Dey, Ayan Banerjee, and Supriya Krishnamurthy, Phys. Rev. Res. 4, 043067 (2022)
2. Probing the rotational spin-Hall effect in a structured Gaussian beam, Ram Nandan Kumar, Yatish, Subhasish Dutta Gupta, Nirmalya Ghosh, and Ayan Banerjee, Phys. Rev. A 105, 023503 (2022).
3. Single-shot wideband active microrheology using multiple-sinusoid modulated optical tweezers, Avijit Kundu , Raunak Dey, Shuvojit Paul, and Ayan Banerjee, Phys. Rev. Fluids 6, 123301 (2021).
4. Quantitative analysis of non-equilibrium systems from short-time experimental data, Sreekanth K. Manikandan, Subhrokoli Ghosh, Avijit Kundu, Biswajit Das, Vipin Agrawal, Dhrubaditya Mitra, Ayan Banerjee, and Supriya Krishnamurthy, Comm. Phys., https://doi.org/10.1038/s42005-021-00766 (2021)
5. Directed Self-Assembly Driven Mesoscale Lithography Using Laser-Induced and Manipulated Microbubbles: Complex Architectures and Diverse Applications, Subhrokoli Ghosh, Anand Dev Ranjan, Santu Das, Rakesh Sen, Basudev Roy, Soumyajit Roy, and Ayan Banerjee, Nano Lett. 21, 10-25 (2021), https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.nanolett.0c03839
6. A study of photophoretic trapping exploiting motional resonances of trapped particles induced by wideband excitation, Souvik Sil, Prithviraj Basak, Anita Pahi, and Ayan Banerjee, Appl. Phys. Lett. 117, 221106 (2020)

• Chair, Department of Physical Sciences, IISER Kolkata (2021 - )
• Member, Internal Works and Development (IWD) Committee, IISER Kolkata (2018-2020)