Calculation of Optical Force at Nanoscale Using Finite Element Method and Maxwell Stress Tensor

Abstract

The manipulations of nanoparticles based on the optical force can avoid mechanical damage to the targets, and the intensity of the optical force can be precisely controlled by the light source. In this paper, a numerical method combining finite element method (FEM) with Maxwell stress tensor (MST) method is presented to calculate the optical force produced by laser source. Gaussian beam is adopted as the excitation to simulate the practical laser source. An example of hybrid nanosphere target is analyzed to show the performance of the proposed method for the calculation of optical force.