Computation of the optical trapping force using an FDTD based technique

The computation details related to computing the optical radiation pressure force on various objects using a 2-D grid FDTD algorithm are presented. The technique is based on propagating the electric and magnetic fields through the grid and determining the changes in the optical energy flow with and without the trap object(s) in the system. Traces displayed indicate that the optical forces and FDTD predicted object behavior are in agreement with published experiments and also determined through other computation techniques. We show computation results for a high and low dielectric disc and thin walled shell. The FDTD technique for computing the light-particle force interaction may be employed in all regimes relating particle dimensions to source wavelength. The algorithm presented here can be easily extended to 3-D and include torque computation algorithms, thus providing a highly flexible and universally useable computation engine. (C) 2005 Optical Society of America.