Optical binding near a planar interface

Light carries momentum which can influence the matter through optical forces. Nowadays, studying of optical forces became a promising field due to widespread usage of single and organized molecular and atomic structures in chemical and biological research, nanophoton-ics, different miniaturized electronic devices. Optical binding is an optical force appearing in the ensemble of particles that controls their motion and can lead to self-organization of structural elements. If an array of nanoparticles is illuminated by light, each element of the array scatters incident wave and a set of potential wells is created which defines stable positions of particles.