Optical Trapping of Metallic Particles by A Fixed Gaussian Beam
Optical Trapping of Metallic Particles by A Fixed Gaussian Beam
Optical Trapping of Metallic Particles by A Fixed Gaussian Beam
3 / February 1, 1998
In this Letter we show that metallic Mie particles can the possibility of trapping. In a sample cell, gold par-
be optically trapped in two dimensions by a single con- ticles were suspended in water. The diameters of the
verging beam. It is believed that the radiation force gold particles were 0.5–3.0 mm.
exerted upon a metallic particle is always a repulsive Figure 3(a) shows a microscopic image of a trapped
force from the geometric rays of light. Therefore opti- gold particle when an objective with a NA of 0.25 was
cal arrangements such as circularly scanning1 or ring- employed. As shown in Fig. 3(b), when we moved the
shaped beams produced by the TEM01 p -mode2 that sample downward, the gold particle was fixed and
rely on repulsive force have been devised for trapping proved to be stably trapped. The particle was also
of metallic particles. A f ixed Gaussian beam focused trapped whether the focus was above or below the
by an objective lens of high numerical aperture (NA; particle. Although an objective with a NA of 0.25
1.2) was also been used,3 since the effective force for was used, the effective NA might have been less than
the trapping is considered to result from the repulsive 0.2 because the laser beam did not cover the whole
force generated by rays with a large inclination about aperture of the objective.
the beam axis. All these methods seem to use repul- To confirm that a creeping wave was generated,
sive force. we show the calculations, which correspond to the ex-
Since the impulse exerted upon a particle is respon- periment described below. As it is known that the
sible for the reaction of momentum transfer of light, light-scattering theory based on ray optics is not
one should turn the ray that is incident upon a par- applicable to the Mie scattering region,6 we tried to
ticle from one side in the opposite direction to generate analyze the radiation force with a rigorous theory de-
attractive force. As shown in Fig. 1(a), light ref lection veloped by Barton et al.7 In this method the arbitrary-
results in repulsive force on a metallic sphere. Let us shaped beam represented by the Debye potentials is
consider the effect of a creeping (surface diffraction) expanded into the spherical modes. Since the gen-
wave on a metallic surface4 [Fig. 1(b)]. Since the mo- eral solutions of the Helmholtz equation are known for
mentum of a ray can be changed similar to that of a each mode, the electromagnetic field distribution can
dielectric particle [Fig. 1(c)], it is easy to recognize that be solved by adjustment of the coeff icients of these solu-
the attractive force against a ray can be exerted upon tions to match the boundary conditions on the surface
a metallic surface. A creeping wave is induced by a of a particle. From the field on the surface, we calcu-
kind of surface plasmon upon a metallic surface. The lated the radiation force of a focused Gaussian beam
effect of a creeping wave is obvious when the size pa- in three dimensions. Figure 4 shows the conditions of
rameter q 2payl, which is equal to the ratio of the the calculations. A linearly polarized Gaussian beam
circumference of a particle to the wavelength, is less illumination (wavelength l 515 nm, diameter of the
than 10 for an incident plane wave.5 Hence the attrac- beam waist w0 2l) is focused on the origin of the
tive force that results from the creeping wave can be three-dimensional spatial coordinates. A gold particle
dominant for smaller particles, whereas the repulsive
force arising from ref lection can be dominant for larger
particles.
We demonstrate here that even the softly focused
Gaussian beam generated by a relatively low NA (0.25)
can trap metallic particles. If a high-NA objective
(1.0) is used, one cannot distinguish between the trap-
ping of the attractive force and that of the repulsive
force because the repulsive force would form an opti-
cal cage.3 Figure 2 is a schematic of the experimental
apparatus for optical trapping of metallic particles. A
linearly polarized Ar1 laser beam (l 515 nm; maxi-
mum power, 1.0 W) was introduced into an objective Fig. 1. (a) Repulsive force arising from surface ref lection,
and focused inside a sample cell. We used two objec- (b) attractive force of a creeping wave, and (c) attractive
tives with different NA’s (0.25 and 0.6) to investigate force arising from refraction from a dielectric particle.