Generalized Mie theory of optical forces

The theory of optical forces on spherical scatterers is here generalized to arbitrary incident fields. The interaction between spherical harmonics of different order, and the degree and azimuthal parity, is studied in detail. The resulting force from all the contributing components is presented in analytical form. A further generalization of this formulation to nonspherical scatterers is also discussed. (C) 2012 Optical Society of America