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arXiv · 2504.18789

The Radiation Pressure of Light: historical perspectives and the role of structured light

Alexander C. Trowbridge·Ewan M. Wright·Kishan Dholakia
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Abstract

Light, or electromagnetic radiation, is well known to possess momentum, and the exchange of this momentum with a reflecting surface leads to radiation pressure. More often than not, it is the radiation pressure generated by a plane wave incident on a flat mirror that is considered. The last few decades have seen the emergence of structured light beams that may possess a complex phase and amplitude structure in both their transverse and longitudinal directions. This paper provides a historical overview of radiation pressure, tracing its discovery and experimental validation, and examines how transitioning to structured light from a plane wave can influence it. In particular, we elucidate the difference in radiation pressure force for structured light fields and how this differs from that of a plane wave at an identical frequency. In particular, the well-known Gouy phase is shown to contribute to a reduction in the radiation pressure force exerted on a flat mirror in comparison to a plane wave for both HG and LG modes. As an illustrative example, we compute that the radiation pressure force for LG modes differs from that of a plane wave by approximately $20$ fN/W for each unit of orbital angular momentum. A detailed experimental proposal to quantify this variance in radiation pressure is described, and we demonstrate that this measurement is within the realm of current metrological techniques.

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Alexander C. Trowbridge, Ewan M. Wright, Kishan Dholakia. 2025-04-26. The Radiation Pressure of Light: historical perspectives and the role of structured light. https://arxiv.org/abs/2504.18789

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