Optical forces acting on a nanoparticle placed into an interference evanescent field

We describe a general way how to calculate analytically optical forces acting on Rayleigh particles or colloids placed into interference field made by evanescent waves. In this paper we focus on a configuration with three interfering waves and we present a comprehensive analysis of optical trap positions, depths, and forces depending on the configuration and polarisation of the incident waves. Particle behaviour is predicted including optical sorting according to the particle refractive index. (c) 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.