Optical Tweezers in Evanescent Fields
Silvia Mittler
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
Silvia
Mittler Home
December 2003
Department of Physics and
Astronomy , University of Western
Ontario
Comments to smittler@uwo.ca