Giant resonant enhancement of optical binding of dielectric particles

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates giant resonant enhancement of optical binding forces between dielectric particles, especially disks, due to high-Q resonances under specific illumination, leading to forces several decades stronger than typical.

Contribution

It provides analytical expressions for optical binding forces and reveals unprecedented force magnitudes and resonant effects in dielectric disks compared to spheres.

Findings

Resonant enhancement of OB force up to several nanoNewtons.

Analytical expression for OB force decreases as 1/L^2 for large L.

Significant dependence of OB force on beam wave vector and particle geometry.

Abstract

Optical coupling of two identical dielectric particles gives rise to bonding and anti-bonding resonances. The latter is featured by significant narrowing of the resonant width and strong enhancement of the $Q$ factor for the high index micron size particles in subwavelength range. We consider particles shaped as spheres and disks under coaxial illumination of dual incoherent counter propagating Bessel beams. In the case of spheres we derive analytical expressions for the optical binding (OB) force which decreases as $1/L^2$ for large distance $L$ between the spheres and displays two periods of oscillations. For close distances the OB force enormously increases in the resonant regime. The case of two coaxial disks owing to variation of the distance between disks and aspect ratio of each disk is featured by extremal enhancement of the $Q$ factor compared to the case of two spheres. In that case we demonstrate unprecedent enhancement of the OB force up to several decades of nano Newtons. We show that the magnitude and sign of the OB force strongly depend on the longitudinal wave vector of the Bessel beams.