Orbital motion of spherical microparticles trapped in diffraction patterns of circularly polarized light

Abstract

We investigate arrays and rotation of spherical microparticles trapped by focusing a circularly polarized Gaussian beam just above the top coverslip-water interface. Particles are trapped in various patterns due to a Fresnel diffraction, such as rings and close-packed structures. We find that rings of particles orbit around the beam axis, whereas close-packed arrays spin in the opposite sense on the beam axis. The sense of the orbiting, as well as that of the spinning, is determined by the input circular polarization handedness. The results are interpreted on the assumption that the spin angular momentum carried by a circularly polarized beam is converted into the orbital angular momentum in the optical process by which the focused Gaussian beam's shape is transformed due to diffraction.