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Tuesday, April 3, 2012

Negative radiation pressure and negative effective refractive index via dielectric birefringence

Jonathan Nemirovsky, Mikael C. Rechtsman, and Mordechai Segev

We show that light guided in a planar dielectric slab geometry incorporating a biaxial medium has lossless modes with group and phase velocities in opposite directions. Particles in a vacuum gap inserted into the structure experience negative radiation pressure: the particles are pulled by light rather than pushed by it. This effectively one-dimensional dielectric structure represents a new geometry for achieving negative radiation pressure in a wide range of frequencies with minimal loss. Moreover, this geometry provides a straightforward platform for experimentally resolving the Abrahams-Minkowski dilemma.

DOI

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