Beam configuration proposal to verify that scattering forces come from the orbital part of the Poynting vector.

In this Letter, the optical forces on an electric dipole generated by a beam made up of two circularly polarized Hermite-Gaussian modes have been analyzed. When the intensity of the two modes is not the same, the mechanical action of the scattering force is completely different from the behavior of the Poynting vector. The dynamics of resonant metallic nanoparticles under this field have been calculated by means of Langevin molecular dynamic simulations. This configuration could be useful to experimentally verify how radiation pressure on a Rayleigh particle is due to the transfer of linear momentum coming solely from the orbital part of the Poynting vector.