Tailored optical landscapes for the biological and colloidal sciences

Optical micro-manipulation has seen a resurgence of interest in recent years which has been due in part to new application areas and the use of tailored forms of light beams particularly using holographic optical tweezers technology. Particle dynamics in 2D and 3D light patterns and the transport properties therein are of interest. We show the ability to sort and separate biological matter in a three dimensional optical lattice.