Optical pulling force on nanoparticle clusters with gain due to Fano-like resonance

Abstract We demonstrate that, in a simple linearly-polarized plane wave, the optical pulling forces on nanoparticle clusters with gain can be induced by Fano-like resonance. The numerical results based on the full-wave calculation show that the optical pulling forces can be attributed to the recoil forces for the nanoparticle clusters composed of dipolar nanoparticles with three different configurations. Interestingly, the recoil forces giving rise to optical pulling forces are exactly dominated by the coupling term between the electric and magnetic dipoles excited in the nanoparticle clusters, while other higher-order terms have a negligible contribution. In addition, the optical pulling force can be tailored by modulating Fano-like resonance via either the particle size or the gain magnitude, offering an alternative freedom degree for optical manipulations of particle clusters.