Optical force on a pair of concentric spheres in a focused laser beam: ray-optics regime

Abstract

The photon stream method is used to derive the optical force on a pair of concentric spheres in a focused beam. The effects of the differences in refractive index and relative size between the inner and outer spheres on the optical force are evaluated. In addition, the effects of total internal reflection at the interface between the inner and outer spheres are examined. Computational results are compared with previous findings. The present method can be applied to arbitrary intensity distributions of the laser beam. (c) 2012 Optical Society of America