Transient chaos and Rayleigh particle escape out of a time modulated optical trap

We consider Rayleigh particles in a periodically modulated optical trap formed by two counterpropagating Gaussian beams. It is shown that for certain values of the parameters the system exhibits transient chaos which manifests itself in particle acceleration and subsequent directional ejection out of the trap. The escape flights are terminated at a distance of hundreds of wavelengths from the trap center and the particles return to the trap under the action of the Stokes force. The particle escape is shown to be a threshold effect that can be potentially employed for particle sorting.