Effect of polarization on transport of particles in air by optical vortex beam

Experiments on transport of spherical particles in air by optical vortex beam show that the speed of transport depends drastically on light polarization. There is a clear correlation between the speed of particle transport in a pipeline formed by cross-polarized vortices: a horizontally polarized beam moves particles faster than a vertically polarized one. To elucidate this effect we demonstrate, both in theory and experiments, that a radial shift of particles away from the vortex axis due to gravity results in polarization dependence of the laser intensity absorbed by the particle and thus determines the speed of transport. The results demonstrate an additional degree of freedom to control particle transport by varying the polarization of the driving vortex beams.