Computation of the optical trapping force on small particles illuminated with a focused light beam using a FDTD method

According to the electromagnetic momentum interpretation due to Minkowski, the optical trapping force is determined by momentum transfer. The computation details related to computing the forces of optical radiation pressure on small particles using the scattered field three-dimensional (3D) grid finite difference time domain (FDTD) algorithm are presented. The technique is based on propagating the focused electromagnetic fields through the grid and determining the changes in the optical energy flow with and without the trapped object in the system. The Richards–Wolf vector field equations are applied to the scattered FDTD approach to specify an incident focused beam. We show computational results for a high refractive index particle. These results are in agreement with published experiments and are similar to other computational methods. Compared with some other calculation results using the FDTD method, our results are more consistent with the results measured.