This thesis makes significant advances in the use of microspheres in optical traps as highly precise sensing platforms. While optically trapped microspheres have recently proven their dominance in aqueous and vacuum environments, achieving state-of-the-art measurements of miniscule forces and torques, their sensitivity to perturbations in air has remained relatively unexplored. This thesis shows that, by uniquely operating in air and measuring its thermally-fluctuating instantaneous velocity, an optically trapped microsphere is an ultra-sensitive probe of both mass and sound. The mass of...

This thesis makes significant advances in the use of microspheres in optical traps as highly precise sensing platforms. While optically trapped microspheres have recently proven their dominance in aqueous and vacuum environments, achieving state-of-the-art measurements of miniscule forces and torques, their sensitivity to perturbations in air has remained relatively unexplored. This thesis shows that, by uniquely operating in air and measuring its thermally-fluctuating instantaneous velocity, an optically trapped microsphere is an ultra-sensitive probe of both mass and sound. The mass of...