Optical Tractor Beam with Chiral Light

TL;DR

This paper introduces a new optical tractor beam mechanism using chiral light and reflection, capable of pulling or pushing chiral objects regardless of their position, by controlling light's handedness.

Contribution

It presents a novel method leveraging chiral light interference to induce controllable optical forces on chiral materials, independent of their location.

Findings

The electromagnetic response can be tailored to always push objects upstream.

Switching the light's handedness reverses the force direction.

The mechanism works regardless of the object's position relative to the mirror.

Abstract

We suggest a novel mechanism to induce the motion of a chiral material body towards an optical source. Our solution is based on the interference between a chiral light beam and its reflection on an opaque mirror. Surprisingly, it is theoretically shown that the electromagnetic response of the material may be tailored in such a way that independent of the specific body location with the respect to the mirror, it is always pushed upstream against the photon flow associated with the incoming wave. Moreover, it is proven that by controlling the handedness of the incoming light it may be possible to harness the sign of the optical force, switching from a pulling force to a pushing force.