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The optical Spin-Hall effect originates from the interaction between the spin angular momentum (SAM) and extrinsic orbital angular momentum (OAM) of light, leading to mutual interrelations between the polarization and trajectory of light in case of non-paraxial fields. Here, we extensively study the SHE and the resultant Spin-Hall shifts (SHS) in optical tweezers (OT) by varying the numerical aperture of objective lenses, and the refractive index (RI) stratification of the trapping medium. Indeed, we obtain much larger values of the SHS for particular combinations of NA and stratification compared to the sub-wavelength orders typically reported. We also observe that the longitudinal component of the spin angular momentum (SAM) density - which is responsible for the spin of birefringent particles in optical tweezers - changes more-or-less monotonically with the lens numerical aperture, except around values of the latter where the angle subtended by the focused light equals the critical angle for a particular RI interface. Our results may find applications in designing experiments for tuning the SHS and SAM induced due to SOI to generate exotic optomechanics of trapped particles in optical tweezers., Comment: 10 pages, 7 figures

Coherent perfect absorption (CPA) has been a topic of considerable contemporary research interest. However, its implementation in practical applications has been limited, since it has been demonstrated only for plane waves till now. The issue for beams with finite confinement -- characterized by a collection of plane waves -- is that complete destructive interference is not feasible for all the plane waves simultaneously. In this paper, we study the absorption characteristics of two counter-propagating structured beams, e.g., Gaussian and Laguerre-Gaussian (LG) beams with and without orbital angular momentum respectively, incident normally on a composite slab from both sides by fulfilling the CPA condition exclusively for the central plane waves. We show that though perfect absorption is not achievable, there can be a substantial reduction of the scattered light. We also consider CPA for oblique incidence and discuss the difficulties., Comment: 5 pages, 6 figures, Comments are appreciated!

We demonstrate an effective and optimal strategy for generating spatially resolved longitudinal spin angular momentum (LSAM) in optical tweezers by tightly focusing first-order azimuthally radially polarized (ARP) vector beams with zero intrinsic angular momentum into a refractive index (RI) stratified medium. The stratified medium gives rise to a spherically aberrated intensity profile near the focal region of the optical tweezers, with off-axis intensity lobes in the radial direction possessing opposite LSAM (helicities corresponding to $\sigma = +1$ and -1) compared to the beam centre. We trap mesoscopic birefringent particles in an off-axis intensity lobe as well as at the beam center by modifying the trapping plane, and observe particles spinning in opposite directions depending on their location. The direction of rotation depends on particle size with large particles spinning either clockwise (CW) or anticlockwise (ACW) depending on the direction of spirality of the polarization of the ARP vector beam after tight focusing, while smaller particles spin in both directions depending on their spatial location. Numerical simulations support our experimental observations. Our results introduce new avenues in spin-orbit optomechanics to facilitate novel yet straightforward avenues for exotic and complex particle manipulation in optical tweezers., Comment: 10 pages, 6 figures

Spin orbit interaction (SOI) due to tight focusing of light in optical tweezers has led to exciting and exotic avenues towards inducing rotation in microscopic particles. However, instances where the back action of the particles influences and modifies SOI effects so as to induce rotational motion are rarely known. Here, we tightly focus a vector beam having radial/azimuthal polarization carrying no intrinsic angular momentum, into a refractive index stratified medium, and observe orbital rotation of birefringent particles around the beam propagation axis. In order to validate our experimental findings, we perform numerical simulations of the underlying equations. Our simulations reveal that the interaction of light with a birefringent particle gives rise to inhomogeneous spin currents near the focus, resulting in a finite spin momentum. This spin momentum combines with the canonical momentum to finally generate an origin-dependent orbital angular momentum which is manifested in the rotation of the birefringent particles around the beam axis. Our study describes a unique modulation of the SOI of light due to interaction with anisotropic particles that can be used to identify new avenues for exotic and complex particle manipulation in optical tweezers., Comment: 7 pages, 6 figures. arXiv admin note: substantial text overlap with arXiv:2302.14443

We observe clear precessional motion of highly birefringent liquid crystal (LC) particles trapped in a spherically aberrated optical trap which is built around a tilted refractive index stratified medium. For input circularly polarized light, the breaking of azimuthal symmetry induced by the tilt leads to an asymmetric intensity distribution in the radial direction near the trap focal plane, which - in combination with the spin-orbit conversion effects for input circularly polarized light - results in non-uniform canonical and spin momentum densities in those regions. In addition, while the canonical momentum remains always oriented towards the axial direction, the spin momentum reverses direction along spatial loops in the radial direction. As a consequence, the total momentum precesses around the canonical momentum vector along elliptical spatial loops - akin to a Larmor-like precession of magnetic moment (total momentum in our case) around a magnetic field (canonical momentum). We probe this precession experimentally using the single trapped LC particles - with the direction of precession determined by the helicity of the input light and the precession frequency varying linearly with the laser power. Our experimental results are validated by numerical simulations of the system where we employ the Debye-Wolf theory for tight focusing in the presence of a tilted stratified media., Comment: 6 pages, 3 figures, Comments are appreciated

In the recent past, optical tweezers incorporating a stratified medium have been exploited to generate complex translational and rotational dynamics in mesoscopic particles due to the coupling between the spin and orbital angular momentum of the light, generated as a consequence of the tight focusing of light by a high numerical aperture objective lens into the stratified medium. Here, we consider an optical tweezers system with a tilted stratified medium (direction of stratification at an angle with the axis of the incident beam), and show that for input circularly polarized Gaussian beams, the resulting spin-orbit interaction deeply influences the generation of transverse spin angular momentum (TSAM) and Belinfante momentum of light, and allows additional control on their magnitude. Importantly, the TSAM generated in our system consists of both the orthogonal components, which is in sharp contrast to the case of evanescent waves and surface plasmons, where only one of the TSAM components are generated. The broken symmetry due to the tilt ensures that, depending upon the helicity of the input beam, the magnitude of the mutually orthogonal components of the TSAM depend entirely on the tilt angle. This may prove to be an effective handle in exotic spin-controlled manipulation of particles in experiments., Comment: 10 pages, 10 figures

We propose a coherent optical method for creating negative refractive index (NRI) for a gaseous ensemble of ground-state polar molecules possessing both permanent electric and magnetic moments. Exploiting the pure rotational transition between the two lowest rotational levels of the ground vibrational state one can generate two dressed states of mixed parity using a microwave laser. These dressed states are then used as the two lower states of a {\Lambda}-type three-level scheme using two infrared lasers to couple them to another ro-vibrational level in the ground-state manifold. One of the infrared lasers is used as a weak probe and the other as a control field with a fixed detuning. We take into account local-field effects on the dielectric response of the medium at the probe frequency in terms of Clausius-Mossoti relation. We extract magnetic response out of purely dielectric response and calculate the magnetic permeability of the medium in terms of dielectric susceptibility. Our results show that there is a small frequency window near the two-photon resonance where both electric permittivity and magnetic permeability are negative with vanishingly small absorption. The figure of merit for the medium is shown to exceed unity. We interpret our results in terms of the proximity of EIT and quantum interference. We discuss the possible realization of our method using cold polar molecules that are recently experimentally produced., Comment: 16 pages, 4 figures. Version-2 is substantially modified following referees comments