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Optical binding phenomena: observations and mechanisms. (English) Zbl 1250.78003

Springer Theses. Berlin: Springer (ISBN 978-3-642-21194-2/hbk; 978-3-642-21195-9/ebook). x, 96 p. (2011).
The author studies trapping and binding phenomena for particles hit by proper electromagnetic radiations. This study provides an explanation of several laboratory experiments by using physical arguments and mathematical models based on a generalized Lorentz-Mie theory, that is, a theoretical model for the electromagnetic scattering from spherical particles.
The book is organized in five chapters. The first one provides an introduction to optical binding phenomena. The second chapter describes a generalized Lorentz-Mie theory for the computation of the electromagnetic field scattered by spherical obstacles; this theory can be seen as a T-matrix method specialized to several spherical obstacles. It is also provided a theoretical model, based on the Maxwell stress tensor, to compute the forces acting on the illuminated obstacles and the corresponding motion. The third chapter studies trapping phenomena occurring with evanescent waves. In particular, the behaviour of a single particle and of clusters of multiple particles in evanescent fields are studied from the theoretical and the experimental point of view. The fourth chapter studies the peculiarities of trapping and of binding phenomena occurring in counter-propagating Gaussian beams, pointing out the very different cases of particles on the axis beam and of particles out of the axis beam. The last chapter gives some conclusions and a number of interesting questions for future investigations.

MSC:

78-02 Research exposition (monographs, survey articles) pertaining to optics and electromagnetic theory
78A45 Diffraction, scattering
78M22 Spectral, collocation and related methods applied to problems in optics and electromagnetic theory
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