Light-induced manipulation with surface plasmons

We review recent advances achieved in the field of surface plasmon-based optical manipulations. We first discuss enhanced optical forces at the surface of a flat metal film and their use for self-organizing a large number of micro-objects. We then show how a suitable engineering of plasmon fields near micro-gold pads enables trapping at a specific location with much weaker laser intensity compared to conventional optical tweezers. This part is illustrated by a series of numerical simulations based on the theory of the Green dyadic. Finally, we show that, beyond their low power requirement, this new generation of integrated optical tweezers offers new perspectives in optical manipulation including parallel trapping with a single beam and controllable selectivity on the object polarizability.