Optical Tweezers in Evanescent Fields

This is a new topic being addressed in the future. The momentum carried in the evanescent field of a propagating waveguide mode should be used to push around nanoobjects on the waveguide surface.

Nanoobjects located on a surface of a waveguide or in particular on a channel waveguide will experience a momentum transfer due to the evanescent field of the guided wave. This momentum transfer should be a function of:

• the guided intensity
• the evanescent field itself, namely the chosen mode
• the nature of the guided wave: cw or pulsed
• the channel width
• the size of the nanoobject
• the dielectric constant of the nanoobject
• the surface tension
• the nature of any surface functionalisation of both the waveguide and the nanoobject
• the interactions - repulsive or attractive - between surface and nanoobject