title: Diffractive optical tweezers in the Fresnel regime.
abstract: We demonstrate a flexible setup for holographic steering of laser tweezers in microscopy using a high resolution spatial light modulator (SLM). In contrast to other methods, hologram read-out is done in the off-axis Fresnel regime rather than in the typically used on-axis Fourier regime. The diffractive structure is calculated as a Fresnel hologram, such that after reflection at the SLM only the desired first diffraction order is guided to the input of an optical microscope, where it generates a tailored optical tweezers field. We demonstrate some advantageous features of this setup, i.e. undesired diffraction orders are suppressed, the optical traps can be easily steered in real-time by just "mouse-dragging" a hologram window at the SLM display, and a number of independently steerable optical traps can be generated simultaneously in a three-dimensional arrangement by displaying a corresponding number of adjacent hologram windows at the SLM screen.
authors.forename: Alexander
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Jesacher
authors.forename: Severin
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Fürhapter
authors.forename: Stefan
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Bernet
authors.forename: Monika
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Ritsch-Marte