Experimental setup for the direct measurement of a light-induced attractive force between two metal bodies

摘要

For numerous applications in science and engineering, the development of technologies for assembling and manipulating macro-, micro-, and nano-objects by means of laser light is of high interest. Most of these attractive forces require dielectric particles they can act on. In recently published papers, a negative light pressure was predicted which acts on metallic bodies if these are separated by a subwavelength slit and which arises from surface plasmon interaction between the metallic bodies1'2. An experimental demonstration of this force has not yet been carried out. First theoretical calculations showed that, for example, a laser power of 100 mW which is fully absorbed in the slit of a laser with a wavelength of 1550 nm would, in a slit having a width of half the wavelength, generate a force of about 1 nN. However, this is roughly three times the force of the radiation pressure of about 0.33 nN. In this work, we present an experimental setup to measure this force, together with results of refined theoretical calculations and with preliminary results achieved with the experimental setup.