Abstract
The studying of how twisted light interacts with chiral matter on the nanoscale is paramount for tackling the challenging task of optomechanical separation of nanoparticle enantiomers, whose solution can revolutionize the entire pharmaceutical industry. Here we calculate optical forces and torques exerted on chiral nanoparticles by Laguerre–Gaussian beams carrying a topological charge. We show that regardless of the beam polarization, the nanoparticles are exposed to both chiral and achiral forces with nonzero reactive and dissipative components. Longitudinally polarized beams are found to produce chirality densities that can be 109 times higher than those of transversely polarized beams and that are comparable to the chirality densities of beams polarized circularly. Our results and analytical expressions prove useful in designing new strategies for mechanical separation of chiral nanoobjects with the help of highly focussed beams.
Highlights
The studying of how twisted light interacts with chiral matter on the nanoscale is paramount for tackling the challenging task of optomechanical separation of nanoparticle enantiomers, whose solution can revolutionize the entire pharmaceutical industry
Derivatization, and other well developed techniques of racemate resolution are useful on analytical scale3,4, but become highly inefficient and quite expensive where kilograms of different chiral mixtures need to be quickly and reliably purified5
While all of them can in principle be used to advance existing and create new techniques for sensing, separation, and delivery of enantiomeric drug molecules, semiconductor nanocrystals appear to be especially promising due to their resistance to photobleaching, tuneable energy spectrum, and highly selective interaction with both enantiomeric molecules and living tissues27,28
Summary
We begin by analysing how a chiral dipole interacts with a light beam produced by a transversely polarised vector potential. By setting e = ex in Eqs [7] and [8], we find that the electric and magnetic fields of the beam are given by. These fields are almost completely transverse, with small longitudinal components originating from the dependence of u on the transverse coordinates
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