Research seminar in Mathematics, Optical forces by Peter Johansson

Abstract

This talk will give a general background to optical forces and torques. I will discuss their physical background and show how they can be calculated in systems consisting of nanoparticles.  The methods are based on generalized Mie theory, a scattering-theoretic framework in which the response of each particle is treated in terms of a multipole expansion. These methods will then be applied to describe the coordinated motion of a collection of gold nanoparticle that self-organize and move in a synchronized way.