Optical forces induced at the metal surface

In this paper we discuss the optical forces acting on a small nanoparticle in the vicinity of a plane metallic surface. We show that illuminating the nanoparticle by a plane wave leads to the excitation of a surface plasmon polariton wave at the metallic interface, which governs the opto-mechanical response of nanoparticle. The presented calculations show that for a nanoparticle in the Rayleigh approximation one can achieve lateral force acting in the direction opposite to incident field.