Related papers: Opto Propeller Effect on Chiral Micro-Rotors
Focused laser beams allow controlling mechanical motion of objects and can serve as a tool for assembling complex micro and nano structures in space. While in a vast majority of cases small particles experience attractive gradient forces…
We theoretically investigate the emergence of lateral (recoil) forces acting on generic dipole-type emitters in the vicinity of a reciprocal translation-invariant substrate. Surprisingly, we find that for linearly-polarized electric dipoles…
We consider optical properties of a gas of molecules that are brought to fast unidirectional spinning by a pulsed laser field. It is shown that a circularly polarized probe light passing through the medium inverts its polarization…
We calculate optical forces and torques exerted on a chiral dipole by chiral light fields and reveal genuinely chiral forces in combining the chiral contents of both light field and dipolar matter. Here, the optical chirality is…
Optical force and torque provide unprecedented control on the spatial motion of small particles. A valid scientific question, that has many practical implications, concerns the existence of fundamental upper bounds for the achievable force…
We have developed a scheme to measure the optical torque, exerted by a laser beam on a phase object, by measuring the orbital angular momentum of the transmitted beam. The experiment is a macroscopic simulation of a situation in optical…
Maxwell noted that light carries angular momentum, and as such it can exert torques on material objects. This was subsequently proved by Beth in 1936. Applications of these opto-mechanical effects were limited initially due to their…
Structured beams of light can move small objects in surprising ways. Particularly striking examples include observations of polarization-dependent forces acting on optically isotropic objects and tractor beams that can pull objects opposite…
Orbital angular momentum and torque transfer play central roles in a wide range of magnetic textures and devices including skyrmions and spin-torque electronics(1-4). Analogous topological structures are now also being explored in…
We describe a way to determine the total angular momentum, both spin and orbital, transferred to a particle trapped in optical tweezers. As an example an LG02 mode of a laser beam with varying degrees of circular polarisation is used to…
In this Letter we show how a single beam optical trap offers the means for three-dimensional manipulation of semiconductor nanorods in solution. Furthermore rotation of the direction of the electric field provides control over the…
We present an experimental realization of a biased optical periodic potential in the low friction limit. The noise-induced bistability between locked (torsional) and running (spinning) states in the rotational motion of a nanodumbbell is…
We introduce the concept of resonant optical torque that allows enhancing substantially a transfer of optical angular momentum (AM) of light to a subwavelength particle. We consider high-index cylindrical dielectric nanoparticles supporting…
We consider the propulsion of micron-scale chiral objects by electromagnetic fields in fluids - a problem with broad applications in microfluidics, pharmaceutics, and biomedicine. Because of the small size of the moving objects, the…
Thermo-osmotic flow around a microparticle in a liquid is characterized by observing and analyzing the distribution of tiny particles, i.e., tracers, near the microparticle's surface. First, an optical trapping laser is used to localize the…
A recent study of the photonic coupling between metallic nanowires has revealed new degrees of freedom in the system. Unexpected spin torques were induced on dimers when illuminated with linearly polarized plane-waves. As near-field…
Chiral active fluids are materials composed of self-spinning rotors that continuously inject energy and angular momentum at the microscale. Out-of-equilibrium fluids with active-rotor constituents have been experimentally realized using…
Light that carries linear or angular momentum can interact with a mechanical object giving rise to optomechanical effects. In particular, a photon transfers its intrinsic angular momentum to an object when the object either absorbs the…
Light can exert radiation pressure on any object it encounters and that resulting optical force can be used to manipulate particles. It is commonly assumed that light should move a particle forward and indeed an incident plane wave with a…
The Fresnel-Snell law, which is one of the fundamental laws in optics and gives insights on the behaviour of light at interfaces, is violated if there exists dissipation in the transmitting media. In order to overcome this problem, we…