Efficient generation of optical bottle beams

TL;DR

This paper introduces a new figure of merit for optical bottle beams, compares different methods, and demonstrates a power-efficient trap using a silicon metasurface.

Contribution

It develops a figure of merit for optical bottle beams, enabling optimized, power-efficient traps via metasurfaces, advancing optical trapping technology.

Findings

The Gaussian beam metasurface trap is more power-efficient.

The figure of merit effectively compares different trap methods.

Numerical demonstration confirms the superiority of the proposed approach.

Abstract

Optical bottle beams can be used to trap atoms and small low-index particles. We introduce a figure of merit for optical bottle beams, specifically in the context of optical traps, and use it to compare optical bottle-beam traps obtained by three different methods. Using this figure of merit and an optimization algorithm, we identified optical bottle-beam traps based on a Gaussian beam illuminating a metasurface that are superior in terms of power efficiency than existing approaches. We numerically demonstrate a silicon metasurface for creating an optical bottle-beam trap.