Light control of silver nanoparticle’s diffusion

Silvia Albaladejo, Manuel I. Marqués, and Juan José Sáenz

The diffusion of silver nanoparticles in water at 298K inside an optical vortex lattice is analyzed in detail by numerical simulations. At power densities of the order of those used to trap nanoparticles with optical tweezers, the dynamic response shows three different regimes depending on the light wavelength. In the first one particles get trapped inside the light vortices following almost closed trajectories. In the second one, around the plasmon resonance, the diffusion constant is dramatically enhanced with respect to the Brownian motion. In the third one, at longer wavelengths, nanoparticles are confined during a few seconds in quasi-one-dimensional optical traps.

DOI