Optical trapping and control of a dielectric nanowire by a nanoaperture
Mehdi Shafiei Aporvari, Fardin Kheirandish & Giovanni Volpe
Optics Letters 40(20), 4807—4810 (2015)
DOI: 10.1364/OL.40.004807
arXiv: 1507.04044
We demonstrate that a single sub-wavelength nanoaperture in a metallic thin film can be used to achieve dynamic optical trapping and control of a single dielectric nanowire. A nanoaperture can trap a nanowire, control its orientation when illuminated by a linearly polarized incident field, and rotate the nanowire when illuminated by a circularly polarized incident field. Compared to other designs, this approach has the advantage of a low-power driving field entailing low heating and photodamage.