We demonstrate the use of supercontinuum radiation to provide enhanced guiding distances of microscopic particles
compared to the standard continuous wave or femtosecond lasers. Our technique relies on the chromatic aberration of the
lens used to form an elongated focal region within which guiding takes place. The resulting beam profile has been
modelled and shows that for a Gaussian input beam, the intensity profile after the lens can be considered as a sum of
Gaussians, one for each wavelength but with varying focal position due to dispersion. Our experimental investigations
compare radiation from continuous wave (bandwidth <1nm) and femtosecond pulsed (bandwidth > 100nm) lasers as
well as supercontinuum radiation (bandwidth > 450nm) and show good agreement with theory.
Optical guiding of microscopic particles in femtosecond and continuous wave Bessel light beams is studied and compared. We confirm that optical guiding is an average power effect and observe no difference in the guiding velocities of non-fluorescing polymer spheres. Furthermore, we observe second harmonic generation of guided KTP crystallites in femtosecond Bessel light beams. This observation opens up the prospect of using multi-photon effects in optical manipulation for applications such as optical identification of guided cells for sorting purposes.
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