Studying the different coupling regimes for a plasmonic particle in a plasmonic trap

Plasmonic antennas improve the stiffness and resolution of optical tweezers by producing a strong near-field. When the antenna traps metallic objects, the optically-resonant object affects the near-field trap, and this interaction should be examined to estimate the optical force accurately. We study this effect in detail by evaluating the force using both Maxwell's stress tensor and the dipole approximation. In spite of the strong optical interaction between the particle and the antenna, the results show that the dipole approximation remains accurate for calculating forces on Rayleigh particles. For particles whose sizes exceed the dipole limit, we observe different coupling regimes where the force becomes either attractive or repulsive. The distributions of field amplitudes and polarization charges explain such a behavior. (C) 2019 Optical Society of America under the terms of the OSA Open Access Publishing Agreement