Radiation forces exerted by a Gaussian beam on an ellipsoidal dielectric particle

Abstract

We present the calculation of radiation forces on an ellipsoidal dielectric generated by its interaction with a Gaussian beam. We employed a vectorial treatment for the rays and a root-finding technique to find the interaction points on any three-dimensional geometry. The model was able to generate caustic structures for a sphere with more uniform ray distributions compared to those presented by Cambaliza et al. Calculations for the sphere, prolate spheroid and tri-axial ellipsoid were able to predict the behavior of the optical trap along the x-axis for varying transverse displacements of the particle.