Evanescent wave induced polarization-insensitive self-organization of stratified single-negative materials

Abstract

Optical fields can induce optical forces between macroscopic objects, giving rise to different structures. Through rigorous calculation, we show that a collection of single negative slabs which possesses either negative permittivity or negative permeability (i.e. ε < 0, μ > 0 or ε > 0, μ < 0) in water can be self-organized into one-dimensional photonic crystals, due to the coupling of propagating wave and evanescent wave. We further demonstrated that the optical binding is irrespective of the polarization and angle of the incident plane wave. We call such a phenomenon—polarization-insensitive optical binding. We also demonstrate that polarization-insensitive optical binding can be achieved on microscale and millimeter scale. Polarization and angle insensitive band edge is the key to achieve polarization and angle insensitive optical binding. This work provides a new strategy to tailor the photonic crystals containing single negative materials towards the development of fine-tuning optical devices.

Optical sorting by trajectory tracking with high sensitivity near the exceptional points

“…By using the finite difference method, the OFSM ↔ K is calculated [42][43][44][45][46], and the corresponding eigenvalues λ ± against the particle radius is plotted in figure 2(a). The particle used here is a polystyrene sphere with refractive index n = 1.57.…”

“…This non-Hermiticity can be manifested by the non-Hermitian optical force stiffness matrix (OFSM), which act as the Hamiltonian governing the particle motion in a dampingless environment within an optical field. Prior studies have investigated the stability of particle trapping and binding in various optical fields by analyzing the eigenvalues of the OFSM [28,[42][43][44][45][46]. However, there is limited research focused on the motion of particle in a damping environment when the eigenvalues become complex.…”

Optical trapping core formation and general trapping mechanism in single-beam optical tweezers

“…In atomic physics, optical forces are the basis for laser cooling techniques [4], which have led to the realization of Bose-Einstein condensation systems [5,6] and atomic lasers [7,8]. When applied to colloid particles, optical micromanipulation can realize all-optical sorting [9,10], provides insight into Brownian motion [11,12] and colloidal dynamics [13][14][15], as well as creates analogs of atomic and superconductive systems [16,17]. Furthermore, in the domain of biological sciences, optical manipulation can allow the examination of biological processes at the single-molecule level or at the cellular and subcellular levels.…”