No Arabic abstract
We theoretically investigate the optical force exerted on an isotropic particle illuminated by a superposition of plane waves. We derive explicit analytical expressions for the exerted force up to quadrupolar polarizabilities. Based on these analytical expressions, we demonstrate that an illumination consisting of two tilted plane waves can provide a full control on the optical force. In particular, optical pulling, pushing and lateral forces can be obtained by the proper tuning of illumination parameters. Our findings might unlock multiple applications based on a deterministic control of the spatial motion of small particles.
The review is devoted to a discussion of new (and often unexpected) aspects of the old problem of elastic light scattering by small metal particles, whose size is comparable to or smaller than the thickness of the skin layer. The main focus is put on elucidating the physical grounds for these new aspects. It is shown that, in many practically important cases, the scattering of light by such particles, despite their smallness, may have almost nothing in common with the Rayleigh one. The so-called, anomalous scattering and absorption, as well as Fano resonances, including unconventional (associated with the excitation of longitudinal electromagnetic oscillations) and directional Fano resonances, observed only in a small solid angle, are discussed in detail. The review contains a Mathematical Supplement, which includes a summary of the main results of the Mie theory and a discussion of some general properties of the scattering coefficients. In addition to purely academic interest, the phenomena considered in this review can find wide applications in biology, medicine, pharmacology, genetic engineering, imaging of ultra-small objects, ultra-high-resolution spectroscopy, information transmission, recording, and processing, and many other applications and technologies. The reported study was funded by RFBR, project number 19-11-00001 and the project of the Russian Science Foundation No. 19-72-30012, within the framework of which all the original calculations given in this publication were performed.
Structural chirality can induce counter-intuitive optical forces due to inherent symmetry properties. While optical forces on a single chiral particle in the Rayleigh regime have been well studied, optical forces in coupled chiral particles remain less explored. By using full-wave numerical simulations and analytical methods of source representation and coupled mode theory, we investigated the optical forces induced by a plane wave on two chiral particles coupling with each other via the evanescent near fields. We found that the induced electric and magnetic dipoles of the chiral particles have complicated couplings that give rise to dark and bright modes. The interaction force between the particles can be either attractive or repulsive, and its magnitude can be significantly enhanced by the resonance modes. The attractive force is much stronger if two particles are of opposite handedness compared with the case of same handedness. The electric dipole force and the magnetic dipole force have the same sign for two particles with the same handedness, while they are of different signs for two particles with opposite handedness. The results can lead to a better understanding of chirality-induced optical forces with potential applications in optical manipulations and chiral light-matter interactions.
A new type of resonant light absorption by a small particle (nanocluster) is reported. The problem cannot be described within the commonly used dipole scattering approximation and should be studied with methods based upon the exact Mie solution. It is shown that the absorption cross-section has giant maxima realized at small values of the imaginary part of the complex dielectric permittivity of the particle. The maxima are situated in the vicinity of the plasmon (polariton) resonances and correspond to the regions where the dissipative damping equals the radiative one. The case is similar to the recently introduced anomalous scattering [PRL vol. 97, 263902 (2006)] and exhibits similar peculiarities.
Appropriate combinations of laser beams can be used to trap and manipulate small particles with optical tweezers as well as to induce significant optical binding forces between particles. These interaction forces are usually strongly anisotropic depending on the interference landscape of the external fields. This is in contrast with the familiar isotropic, translationally invariant, van der Waals and, in general, Casimir-Lifshitz interactions between neutral bodies arising from random electromagnetic waves generated by equilibrium quantum and thermal fluctuations. Here we show, both theoretically and experimentally, that dispersion forces between small colloidal particles can also be induced and controlled using artificially created fluctuating light fields. Using optical tweezers as gauge, we present experimental evidence for the predicted isotropic attractive interactions between dielectric microspheres induced by laser-generated, random light fields. These light induced interactions open a path towards the control of translationally invariant interactions with tuneable strength and range in colloidal systems.
Small composite objects, known as Janus particles, drive sustained scientific interest primarily targeted at biomedical applications, where such objects act as micro- or nanoscale actuators, carriers, or imaging agents. The major practical challenge is to develop effective methods for manipulation of Janus particles. The available long-range methods mostly rely on chemical reactions or thermal gradients, therefore having mediocre precision and strong dependency on the content and properties of the carrier fluid. To tackle these limitations, we propose the manipulation of Janus particles (here, silica microspheres half-coated with gold) by optical forces in the evanescent field of an optical nanofiber. We find that Janus particles exhibit stronger transverse localization and faster propulsion compared to all-dielectric particles of the same size. The propulsion speed recorded for a 3-$mu$m particle with a 20-nm-thick gold cap averages at 2~$mu$m/s per 1~mW of optical power, reaching 133 body length/s at 200~mW going through the nanofiber.