Bottle beam from a bare laser for single-beam trapping

Abstract

We demonstrate that a laser beam converging from a specific transverse mode is a bottle beam, as described in J. Opt. Soc. Am. B 20, 1220 (2003). To our knowledge, this is the first time that a bottle beam has been generated directly from a laser. By calculating the radiation forces on a dielectric Rayleigh sphere in the bottle beam, we show that the single beam can trap high-refractive-index particles at the multiple axial sites of intensity maxima, and it can confine low-index particles on a transverse plane within the bottle regions. Such a novel laser beam may have other applications.