Deterministic ratchet from stationary light fields

Abstract

Ratchets are dynamic systems where particle transport is induced by zero-average forces due to the interplay between nonlinearity and asymmetry. Generally, they rely on the effect of a strong external driving. We show that stationary optical lattices can be designed to generate particle flow in one direction while requiring neither noise nor driving. Such optical fields must be arranged to yield a combination of conservative (dipole) and nonconservative (radiation pressure) forces. Under strong friction all paths converge to a discrete set of limit periodic trajectories flowing in the same direction.

6 pages, 4 figures

References in corpus (5)

• Brownian motors: noisy transport far from equilibrium
• Artificial Brownian motors: Controlling transport on the nanoscale
• Voltage rectification by a SQUID ratchet
• Ratchet effect in dc SQUIDs
• Crossed ratchet effects for magnetic domain wall motion

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• Spontaneous rectification and absolute negative mobility of inertial Brownian particles induced by Gaussian potentials in steady laminar flows
• Control of diffusion of nano-particles in an optical vortex lattice
• Persistent current by a static non-Hermitian ratchet