Generating stable tractor beams with dielectric metasurfaces

Propagation-invariant beams that pull objects towards a light source are commonly known as tractor beams. Here, an efficient, linearly polarized tractor beam with improved stability is introduced. The beam consists of a superposition of transverse-electric and transverse-magnetic polarized Bessel beams of orders m = +1 and m = -1. It is shown that this beam can stably pull a wide range of dielectric microparticles arbitrarily long distances, independent of ambient conditions. Next, a straightforward method of generating these high-performance beams is proposed. A Si metasurface transforms an incident linearly polarized Gaussian beam into the desired tractor beam. Full-wave simulations demonstrate that it is possible for this simple geometry to pull a polystyrene sphere a distance equal to the nondiffracting range of the Bessel beam. The simplicity of the setup and the robust performance of the proposed tractor beam significantly enhance the ability to manipulate matter with light.