Great shot of non-contact material suspension & heating. Around 15 years ago a company in the Chicago area was doing similar work for handling non-metallic materials like ceramics and glasses. Because they have no magnetic interactions their process uses high intensity ultrasound beams to levitate the materials and our lasers for the heating function.
I find acustic levitation very fascinating - if I remember correctly, the reason why it works lies in the nonlinear behaviour of the "speakers" membrane. In simple harmonic mode it simply wouldn't work.
And that is very interesting concept to use or glassy materials.
Well damn... the company I mentioned , Containerless Research, Inc, shut down in 2006. Good news is that they have kept a webpage alive with links to all their papers on the technology. [link] Direct link to papers on containerless precessing is [link]
Glad to help spread the knowledge. Dunna know what yer work is but the acoustic levitation would get around the problem of magnetic interactions that give the levitation stopping when the metals are at high temp.
And that is very interesting concept to use or glassy materials.