Optically bound microscopic particles in one dimension

Counter-propagating light fields have the ability to create self-organized one-dimensional optically bound arrays of microscopic particles, where the light fields adapt to the particle locations and vice versa. We develop a theoretical model to describe this situation and show good agreement with recent experimental data (Phys. Rev. Lett. 89, 128301 (2002)) for two and three particles, if the scattering force is assumed to dominate the axial trapping of the particles. The extension of these ideas to two and three dimensional optically bound states is also discussed.