Optical guiding of microscopic particles in femtosecond and continuous wave Bessel light beams.

Optical guiding of microscopic particles is studied and compared for femtosecond and continuous wave Bessel light beams. We confirm that optical guiding is an average power effect and observe no difference in the guiding velocities for non-fluorescing polymer microspheres. Additionally, we observe second harmonic generation of guided KTP particles. This observation opens up the prospect for optical identification of guided cells for sorting purposes.