Abstract
Compared with optical resonant structures, current plasmonic waveguides have the advantage of enhancing
optical forces in a broad range of wavelengths, but the enhancement can only be maintained for several dozens of
microns at 1.55 μm. Here, a hybrid long-range plasmonic waveguide, consisting of two identical dielectric nanowires
symmetrically placed on each side of a thin metal film, is proposed for optical forces. Strong optical coupling
between the dielectric waveguide mode and long-range plasmonic mode leads to enhanced optical forces on the dielectric
nanowire at low input optical power due to the deep subwavelength optical energy confinement. The enhancement can be
maintained for distances of 1∼2 orders of magnitude larger than that of previous plasmonic waveguides. The deep
subwavelength optical confinement as well as enhanced field gradient also allows eff
icient trapping of single nanoscale particle, while the smaller propagation loss ensures a much larger
trapping region at the same input optical power. The present results enable the potential applications of precisely
controlling the positions of dielectric nanowires as well as manipulating a single nanoparticle such as a biomolecule
and one quantum dot.
© 2013 IEEE
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