Polarization-dependent ablation of silicon using tightly focused femtosecond laser vortex pulses.

We demonstrate experimentally that, in a tight focusing geometry, circularly polarized femtosecond laser vortex pulses ablate material differently depending on the handedness of light. This effect offers an additional degree of freedom to control the shape and size of laser-machined structures on a subwavelength scale.

Optical manipulation of particle ensembles in air.

We demonstrate that airborne light-absorbing particles can be photophoretically trapped and moved inside an optical lattice formed by multiple-beam interference. This technique allows simultaneous three-dimensional manipulation of multiple micro-objects in gases.