Fast and accurate algorithm for repeated optical trapping simulations on arbitrarily shaped particles based on boundary element method.

In optical trapping applications, the optical force should be investigated within a wide range of parameter space in terms of beam configuration to reach the desirable performance. A simple but reliable way of conducting the related investigation is to evaluate optical forces corresponding to all possible beam configurations. Although the optical force exerted on arbitrarily shaped particles can be well predicted by boundary element method (BEM), such investigation is time costing because it involves many repetitions of expensive computation, where the forces are calculated from the equivalent surface currents. An algorithm is proposed to alleviate the difficulty by exploiting our previously developed skeletonization framework. The proposed algorithm succeeds in reducing the number of repetitions. Since the number of skeleton beams is always much less than that of beams in question, the computation can be very efficient. The proposed algorithm is accurate because the skeletonization is accuracy controllable. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]