The Radiation Pressure of Light: historical perspectives and the role of structured light
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| Format: | Preprint |
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2025
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| author | Trowbridge, Alexander C. Wright, Ewan M. Dholakia, Kishan |
| author_facet | Trowbridge, Alexander C. Wright, Ewan M. Dholakia, Kishan |
| contents | Light, or electromagnetic radiation, is well known to possess momentum, and the exchange of this momentum with a reflecting surface leads to radiation pressure. More often than not, it is the radiation pressure generated by a plane wave incident on a flat mirror that is considered. The last few decades have seen the emergence of structured light beams that may possess a complex phase and amplitude structure in both their transverse and longitudinal directions. This paper provides a historical overview of radiation pressure, tracing its discovery and experimental validation, and examines how transitioning to structured light from a plane wave can influence it. In particular, we elucidate the difference in radiation pressure force for structured light fields and how this differs from that of a plane wave at an identical frequency. In particular, the well-known Gouy phase is shown to contribute to a reduction in the radiation pressure force exerted on a flat mirror in comparison to a plane wave for both HG and LG modes. As an illustrative example, we compute that the radiation pressure force for LG modes differs from that of a plane wave by approximately $20$ fN/W for each unit of orbital angular momentum. A detailed experimental proposal to quantify this variance in radiation pressure is described, and we demonstrate that this measurement is within the realm of current metrological techniques. |
| format | Preprint |
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arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2504_18789 |
| institution | arXiv |
| publishDate | 2025 |
| record_format | arxiv |
| spellingShingle | The Radiation Pressure of Light: historical perspectives and the role of structured light Trowbridge, Alexander C. Wright, Ewan M. Dholakia, Kishan Optics History and Philosophy of Physics Light, or electromagnetic radiation, is well known to possess momentum, and the exchange of this momentum with a reflecting surface leads to radiation pressure. More often than not, it is the radiation pressure generated by a plane wave incident on a flat mirror that is considered. The last few decades have seen the emergence of structured light beams that may possess a complex phase and amplitude structure in both their transverse and longitudinal directions. This paper provides a historical overview of radiation pressure, tracing its discovery and experimental validation, and examines how transitioning to structured light from a plane wave can influence it. In particular, we elucidate the difference in radiation pressure force for structured light fields and how this differs from that of a plane wave at an identical frequency. In particular, the well-known Gouy phase is shown to contribute to a reduction in the radiation pressure force exerted on a flat mirror in comparison to a plane wave for both HG and LG modes. As an illustrative example, we compute that the radiation pressure force for LG modes differs from that of a plane wave by approximately $20$ fN/W for each unit of orbital angular momentum. A detailed experimental proposal to quantify this variance in radiation pressure is described, and we demonstrate that this measurement is within the realm of current metrological techniques. |
| title | The Radiation Pressure of Light: historical perspectives and the role of structured light |
| topic | Optics History and Philosophy of Physics |
| url | https://arxiv.org/abs/2504.18789 |