Vector finite element modeling of optical tweezers Original Research Article

It has been established that under certain conditions microscopic dielectric objects can be trapped by a tightly focused laser beam. This phenomena is commonly referred to as an optical tweezer, and it has important applications in biological instrumentation. In this paper we describe how the vector finite element method can be used to compute optical trapping efficiencies for arbitrarily shaped dielectric objects, and we present new results for trapping efficiencies versus dielectric constant.