Optical guiding of absorbing nanoclusters in air

We suggest a novel approach in all-optical trapping employing a photophoretic force for manipulation of absorbing particles in open air. We demonstrate experimentally the robust three-dimensional guiding, over the distances of a few millimeters, of agglomerates of carbon nanoparticles with the size spanned from 100 nm to 10 mu m, as well as their acceleration up to velocities of 1 cm/sec. We achieve stable positioning and guiding of particles as well as simultaneous trapping of a large number of particles in a dual beam optical trap created by two counter-propagating and co-rotating optical vortex beams. (C) 2009 Optical Society of America