Abstract
Optical forces and torques are two mechanical degrees of freedom available to manipulate matter, and form the basis of optical tweezing strategies1,2. In contrast to the Keplerian intuition that objects should be pushed downstream an incident photon flux, the concept of ‘negative’ optical forces has recently been described3,4 and has triggered many developments5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13,14. Here, we report on the counterintuitive angular analogue of negative optical forces by demonstrating that circularly polarized Gaussian light beams give rise to torque with opposite sign to that of the incident optical angular momentum. Such a ‘left-handed’ mechanical effect is demonstrated by the use of an inhomogeneous and anisotropic transparent macroscopic medium. Practical difficulties associated with the direct observation of optically induced spinning of a macroscopic object are circumvented via the rotational Doppler effect15,16. These results shed light on spin–orbit optomechanics and equip the left-handed optomechanical toolbox with angular features.
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Acknowledgements
The authors thank C. Loussert for the polariscopic optical characterization of the samples. This study received financial support from the French State in the frame of the ‘Investments for the future’ Programme IdEx Bordeaux (reference ANR-10-IDEX-03-02).
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D.H. realized the experimental set-up and conducted the experiments. E.B. conceived the experiment and supervised the project. D.H. and E.B. wrote the manuscript.
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Hakobyan, D., Brasselet, E. Left-handed optical radiation torque. Nature Photon 8, 610–614 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1038/nphoton.2014.142
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nphoton.2014.142
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