Ultrasensitive diagnostic analysis of Au nanoparticles optically trapped in silicon photonic circuits at sub-milliwatt powers.

Silicon microcavity-based optical trapping of Au nanoparticles with diameters as small as ≈24 nm is achieved using optical powers <1 mW. By comparing measured and modeled histograms of transmission time series data obtained when a particle is trapped in the cavity, it is shown that the influence of backaction on the transmitted light dynamics alone can be used to determine the size of trapped particles with nanometer precision.