Lateral forces on nanoparticles near a surface under circularly-polarized plane-wave illumination

Abstract: Optical forces allow manipulation of small particles and control of nanophotonic structures with light beams. Here, we describe a counter-intuitive lateral optical force acting on particles placed above a substrate, under uniform plane wave illumination without any field gradients. We show that under circularly-polarized illumination, nanoparticles experience a lateral force as a result of dipolar, spin-sensitive scattering, with a magnitude comparable to other optical forces. To this end, we rigorously calculate the force experienced by a circularly polarized dipole radiating above a surface. Unlike for linearly-polarized dipoles, force components parallel to the surface can exist, caused by the recoil of unidirectional guided modes excited at the surface and/or by dipole-dipole interactions with the induced image dipole. These results were presented and discussed in conferences [1] and [2].