Optical forces through the effective refractive index

Energy-based methods such as the dispersion relation (DR) and response theory of optical forces (RTOF) have been largely applied to obtain the optical forces in the nano-optomechanical devices, in contrast to the Maxwell stress tensor (MST). In this Letter, we apply first principles to show explicitly why these methods must agree with the MST formalism in linear lossless systems. We apply the RTOF multi-port to show that the optical force expression on these devices can be extended to analyze multiple light sources, broadband sources, and multimode devices, with multiple degrees of freedom. We also show that the DR method, when expressed as a function of the derivative of the effective index performed at a fixed wave vector, may be misinterpreted and lead to overestimated results. (C) 2017 Optical Society of America