Reactive optical matter: light-induced motility in electrodynamically asymmetric nanoscale scatterers
- Univ. of Chicago, IL (United States)
- Univ. of Chicago, IL (United States); Western Washington Univ., Bellingham, WA (United States)
- Argonne National Lab. (ANL), Argonne, IL (United States)
From Newton’s third law, which is known as the principle of actio et reactio, we expect the forces between interacting particles to be equal and opposite for closed systems. Otherwise, “nonreciprocal” forces can arise. This has been shown theoretically in the interaction between dissimilar optically trapped particles that are mediated by an external field. As a result, despite the incident external field not having a transverse component of momentum, the particle pair experiences a force in a direction that is transverse to the light propagation direction. In this letter, we directly measure the net nonreciprocal forces in electrodynamically interacting asymmetric nanoparticle dimers and nanoparticle structures that are illuminated by plane waves and confined to pseudo one-dimensional geometries. We show via electrodynamic theory and simulations that interparticle interactions cause asymmetric scattering from heterodimers. Therefore, the nonreciprocal forces are a consequence of momentum conservation. Our study demonstrates that asymmetric scatterers exhibit directed motion due to the breakdown of mirror symmetry in open systems that involve incident external fields.
- Research Organization:
- Argonne National Laboratory (ANL), Argonne, IL (United States)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- US Department of the Navy, Office of Naval Research (ONR); USDOE Office of Science (SC), Basic Energy Sciences (BES)
- Grant/Contract Number:
- AC02-06CH11357
- OSTI ID:
- 1559133
- Journal Information:
- Light, Science & Applications, Vol. 7, Issue 1; ISSN 2047-7538
- Publisher:
- Nature Publishing GroupCopyright Statement
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
Web of Science
Similar Records
Optical matter machines: angular momentum conversion by collective modes in optically bound nanoparticle arrays
Equation of motion in classical electrodynamics. [Poymting momentum]