Tunable on-chip optical traps for levitating particles based on single-layer metasurface

• DOI: 10.48550/arxiv.2401.08852
• Publication Date: 2024-01-01
• Authors: Chuang Sun; Hailong Pi; Kian Shen Kiang; Tiberius Georgescu; Jun‐Yu Ou; Hendrik Ulbricht; Jize Yan
• Keywords: Bistability; Optical force; Numerical aperture; Trap (plumbing)

Optically levitated multiple nanoparticles has emerged as a platform for studying complex fundamental physics such non-equilibrium phenomena, quantum entanglement, and light-matter interaction, which could be applied sensing weak forces torques with high sensitivity accuracy. An optical trapping landscape of increased complexity is needed to engineer the interaction between particles beyond single harmonic trap. However, existing platforms based on spatial light modulators interactions suffered from low efficiency, instability at focal points, systems, scalability applications. Here, we experimentally demonstrated that metasurface forms two diffraction-limited points numerical aperture (0.9) efficiency (31%) can generate tunable potential wells without any intensity fluctuations. A bistable double were observed in experiment by varying distance, hours, used investigating nonlinear dynamics, thermal binding. This would pave way scaling number optomechanical devices or realizing paralleled sensors.