Optical Forces in Nanostructured Material*

Nanostructured material is presented as a means to control the force on a solid-state material. We describe results for resonant cavities in metal and for other surface waveguides that are excited with an array of slots that can both enhance the pressure and control the direction of the force. More generally, we relate nanostructured material to optical force for aperiodic binary structures, where a region of space is decomposed into a grid and some voxels have material and others do not. The work is an extension of our recent description of field control and statistics with such structures. This theoretical and simulation effort interfaces with an experimental program and emphasizes fundamental understanding related to forces on structured material. Use of both the incident wave properties and the structure and composition of a material provides fertile dimensions to control the optical force that can be imparted. This work could impact applications such as all-optical communications, where routing is achieved by optomechanical control, cavity cooling, tweezing where structured beads are used, and other fields where remote actuation is important.