Open AccessLaser induced surface stress on water droplets
Author(s) -
Neng Wang,
Zhen Lin,
Jack Ng
Publication year - 2014
Publication title -
optics express
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.394
H-Index - 271
ISSN - 1094-4087
DOI - 10.1364/oe.22.023770
Subject(s) - optics , materials science , radius , stress (linguistics) , laser , laplace pressure , wavelength , gaussian beam , surface stress , beam (structure) , particle (ecology) , light beam , physics , surface tension , thermodynamics , philosophy , linguistics , computer security , deflection (physics) , oceanography , computer science , geology
Laser induced stress on spherical water droplets is studied. At mechanical equilibrium, the body stress vanishes therefore we consider only the surface stress. The surface stress on sub-wavelength droplets is slightly weaker along the light propagation direction. For larger droplets, due to their light focusing effect, the forward stress is significantly enhanced. For a particle roughly 3 micron in radius, when it is excited at whispering gallery mode with Q ∼ 10⁴ by a 1 Watt Gaussian beam, the stress can be enhanced by two orders of magnitude, and can be comparable with the Laplace pressure.