216 OPTICS LETTERS / Vol. 23, No.

3 / February 1, 1998

Optical trapping of metallic particles by a fixed Gaussian beam

Hiromitsu Furukawa and Ichirou Yamaguchi
The Institute of Physical and Chemical Research (RIKEN), Wako, Saitama 351-01, Japan

Received August 25, 1997

We demonstrate optical trapping of gold particles by use of single-beam gradient force. It is found that
the radiation force exerted upon a gold particle can point toward the focus of the incident beam in two
dimensions. Computations of the radiation force exerted upon a gold particle are also carried out to examine
this phenomenon.  1998 Optical Society of America
OCIS codes: 140.7010, 290.0290, 290.4020, 290.5850, 240.6690, 170.4520.

In this Letter we show that metallic Mie particles can
be optically trapped in two dimensions by a single con-
verging beam. It is believed that the radiation force
exerted upon a metallic particle is always a repulsive
force from the geometric rays of light. Therefore opti-
cal arrangements such as circularly scanning1 or ring-
shaped beams produced by the TEM01 p -mode2 that
rely on repulsive force have been devised for trapping
of metallic particles. A f ixed Gaussian beam focused
by an objective lens of high numerical aperture (NA;
1.2) was also been used,3 since the effective force for
the trapping is considered to result from the repulsive
force generated by rays with a large inclination about
the beam axis. All these methods seem to use repul-
sive force.
Since the impulse exerted upon a particle is respon-
sible for the reaction of momentum transfer of light,
one should turn the ray that is incident upon a par-
ticle from one side in the opposite direction to generate
attractive force. As shown in Fig. 1(a), light ref lection
results in repulsive force on a metallic sphere. Let us
consider the effect of a creeping (surface diffraction)
wave on a metallic surface4 [Fig. 1(b)]. Since the mo-
mentum of a ray can be changed similar to that of a
dielectric particle [Fig. 1(c)], it is easy to recognize that
the attractive force against a ray can be exerted upon
a metallic surface. A creeping wave is induced by a
kind of surface plasmon upon a metallic surface. The
effect of a creeping wave is obvious when the size pa-
rameter q ­ 2payl, which is equal to the ratio of the
circumference of a particle to the wavelength, is less
than 10 for an incident plane wave.5 Hence the attrac-
tive force that results from the creeping wave can be
dominant for smaller particles, whereas the repulsive
force arising from ref lection can be dominant for larger
particles.
We demonstrate here that even the softly focused
Gaussian beam generated by a relatively low NA (0.25)
can trap metallic particles. If a high-NA objective
(1.0) is used, one cannot distinguish between the trap-
ping of the attractive force and that of the repulsive
force because the repulsive force would form an opti-
cal cage.3 Figure 2 is a schematic of the experimental
apparatus for optical trapping of metallic particles. A
linearly polarized Ar1 laser beam (l ­ 515 nm; maxi-
mum power, 1.0 W) was introduced into an objective
and focused inside a sample cell. We used two objec-
tives with different NA’s (0.25 and 0.6) to investigate
the possibility of trapping. In a sample cell, gold par-
ticles were suspended in water. The diameters of the
gold particles were 0.5–3.0 mm.
Figure 3(a) shows a microscopic image of a trapped
gold particle when an objective with a NA of 0.25 was
employed. As shown in Fig. 3(b), when we moved the
sample downward, the gold particle was fixed and
proved to be stably trapped. The particle was also
trapped whether the focus was above or below the
particle. Although an objective with a NA of 0.25
was used, the effective NA might have been less than
0.2 because the laser beam did not cover the whole
aperture of the objective.
To confirm that a creeping wave was generated,
we show the calculations, which correspond to the ex-
periment described below. As it is known that the
light-scattering theory based on ray optics is not
applicable to the Mie scattering region,6 we tried to
analyze the radiation force with a rigorous theory de-
veloped by Barton et al.7 In this method the arbitrary-
shaped beam represented by the Debye potentials is
expanded into the spherical modes. Since the gen-
eral solutions of the Helmholtz equation are known for
each mode, the electromagnetic field distribution can
be solved by adjustment of the coeff icients of these solu-
tions to match the boundary conditions on the surface
of a particle. From the field on the surface, we calcu-
lated the radiation force of a focused Gaussian beam
in three dimensions. Figure 4 shows the conditions of
the calculations. A linearly polarized Gaussian beam
illumination (wavelength l ­ 515 nm, diameter of the
beam waist w0 ­ 2l) is focused on the origin of the
three-dimensional spatial coordinates. A gold particle
Fig. 1. (a) Repulsive force arising from surface ref lection,
(b) attractive force of a creeping wave, and (c) attractive
force arising from refraction from a dielectric particle.

0146-9592/98/030216-03$10.00/0  1998 Optical Society of America

 February 1, 1998 / Vol. 23, No. 3 / OPTICS LETTERS 217

result can be interpreted as evidence that a creeping

wave was generated. On the other hand, when the
metallic particle approaches the optical axis, which has
a strong intensity of the Gaussian beam prof ile, the
repulsive force generated by ref lection on the metallic
surface exceeds the attractive force [Fig. 5(a)]. For
instance, when displacement d is 0.3l, the radiation
force is repulsive, because light ref lection is dominant,
as shown in Fig. 5(c). These balancing forces are
clearly observed in the experiments described below.
By employing an objective with a NA of 0.6, we could
trap gold particles 0.5– 3.0 mm in diameter when the
Fig. 2. Experimental setup for trapping metallic particles. focal plane was below the center of the particles. If
the laser was focused above the particles, the repulsive
force from the optical axis was exerted upon the
particles. These results seem to agree with the report
of Sato et al., except that they used an objective with
a NA of 1.2.3 This phenomenon is clearly shown in
Fig. 6. The laser beam was incident upon the sample

Fig. 3. Microscopic images of a trapped gold particle (a)

before and (b) after movement of the sample cell.

Fig. 4. Geometry for calculating the potential of a gold

particle.

is located at position (d, 0, 0). The size parameter

of the particle is set to be q ­ 5.0 (diameter f ­
1.6l), which is assumed to be the size of the Mie-
scattering particle sq . 1d. The refractive index of
Fig. 5. (a) Potential distribution calculated from the radi-
gold is set to be n ­ 0.61 1 2.1i, which is adopted from ation force and scattering intensity distribution when (b)
the value of bulk gold for l ­ 515 nm.8 Figure 5(a) d ­ 2l and (c) d ­ 0.3l.
shows the calculated optical potential of the gold
particle illuminated by the Gaussian beam. When the
displacement of the particle is d ­ 2l, the particle is
pulled toward the optical axis. In Fig. 5(b) the polar-
plotted scattering intensity, which does not include
the initial incident light, is also shown under this
condition. The polar-plotted scattering intensity as
normalized by the intensity of forward scattering must
be greatest when the particle is located at the center of
the Gaussian beam prof ile, as is characteristic of a Mie-
scattering particle, whereas the scattering intensity in
Fig. 5(b) tilts by 8± in the same direction as the particle Fig. 6. Microscopic images of aggregated gold particles
displacement. Considering the direction of both this when the focal plane is (a) below the particles and (b)
momentum transfer and that of the radiation force, this several micrometers above them.
218 OPTICS LETTERS / Vol. 23, No. 3 / February 1, 1998
Fig. 7. Calculations of radiation force in x – y cross sec-
tions illuminated by a Gaussian beam. A gold particle is
located (a), (b) above and (c) below the center focus. The
incident beam propagates along the 1z axis and is focused
on the origin. The diameter of the beam waist is 1.03 mm
s2ld. The dashed ellipse in (b) indicates the potential val-
ley where gold particles gather.
cell, which contained randomly distributed particles.
Then many particles that were present around the
focal point gathered to form the aggregation shown
in Fig. 6(a). When the focal point was shifted above
aggregation, the particles spread and formed a circle
around the beam axis, as shown in Fig. 6(b). When
we adjusted the focal position along the beam axis,
the circular shape was kept stable even under the
perturbation of Brownian motion in water, which
means that off-axis metallic particles were trapped by
the balance between the attractive force that resulted
from creeping light and the repulsive force exerted
by surface ref lection. The force balancing generates
the potential minimum along the circle formed by the
fixed gold particles. The radius of the circle varies
depending on the distance of the particles from the
focal plane, and we also observed this dependence for
a single metallic particle. A gold particle was also
trapped at a position that deviated from the focus
center when the focus position was regulated.
Figure 7 shows a vector plot of the calculated radia-
tion force on an x –y cross section on which the particle
was placed. The origin was fixed at the focal point of
the incident Gaussian beam. The incident beam was
assumed to propagate in the 1z-axis direction and is
linearly polarized, with the electric f ield oscillation in
the x-axis direction. The wavelength of the incident
Gaussian beam was assumed to be 515 nm, and the
beam-waist diameter was 1.03 mm s­2ld. The diam-
eter of a gold sn ­ 0.61 1 2.1id particle was 1.03 mm
s­ 2ld. We restrict the discussion to the two-
dimensional trapping done in the experiments. If the
focal plane is 5.15 mm below a particle, as shown in
Fig. 7(a), the directions of radiation force are toward
the optical axis, which means that the gold particle
is attracted to the Gaussian beam axis. When the
focal plane is 3.09 mm below a particle, a gold particle
approaches the area indicated by the elliptical dashed
curve in Fig. 7(b), where it is trapped. Since the
intensities of scattering and creeping light depend on
the polarization of incident light, the shape of this
dashed curve is elliptical. The calculations shown
in Figs. 7(a) and 7(b) correspond to the experimental
results shown in Figs. 6(a) and 6(b), respectively. The
diameter of the circle in Fig. 6(b) is 8 mm, whereas
the theoretical ellipse in Fig. 7(b) is 5 mm. This
discrepancy can be attributed to the fact that we
used a finite aperture in the experiments, whereas a
Gaussian prof ile of an inf inite aperture was assumed
in the calculations. The general phenomenon shown
in Fig. 6, however, can be examined by use of these
calculations. On the other hand, when the focal plane
is far above the particle, the gold particle cannot be
trapped, as shown in Fig. 7(c).
In summary, we have shown that a single laser beam
is able to trap metallic Mie particles. These attractive
forces were observed acting on the metallic particles
only for very small particles in the Rayleigh scattering
region9 and in the case of particles positioned on the
optical waveguide.10
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