Substrate and Fano Resonance Effects on the Reversal of Optical Binding Force between Plasmonic Cube Dimers

Abstract

The behavior of Fano resonance and the reversal of near field optical binding force of dimers over different substrates have not been studied so far. Notably, for particle clustering and aggregation, controlling the near filed binding force can be a key factor. In this work, we observe that if the closely located plasmonic cube homodimers over glass or high permittivity dielectric substrate are illuminated with plane wave, no reversal of lateral optical binding force occurs. But if we apply the same set-up over a plasmonic substrate, stable Fano resonance occurs along with the reversal of near field lateral binding force. It is observed that during such Fano resonance, stronger coupling occurs between the dimers and plasmonic substrate along with the strong enhancement of the substrate current. Such binding force reversals of plasmonic cube dimers have been explained based on the observed unusual behavior of optical Lorentz force during the induced stronger Fano resonance and the dipole-dipole resonance. Although previously reported reversals of near field optical binding forces were highly sensitive to particle size/shape (i.e. for heterodimers) and inter-particle distance, our configuration provides much relaxation of those parameters and hence could be verified experimentally with simpler experimental set-ups.