Interactive control of holographic optical traps with fast hologram generation

Holographic optical tweezers (HOTs) make use of computer generated holograms to manipulate multiple optical traps. Uptill now, various algorithms have been proposed to calculate the hologram patterns. However the update rate of such holograms for a spatial light modulator (SLM) is often restricted to around 10 Hz due to the slow computation in computer, limiting fast manipulation of optical traps in real-time. In this paper, we present the method and control software for interactive control of holographic optical traps with fast hologram generation by increasing the update rate of holograms. The developed software is written in Visual C++ platform and is capable of computing complex holograms with an update rate of 55 Hz, regardless of the number of traps. For experimental demonstrations, we show three dimensional, real-time manipulations of 5 ¿m polystyrene beads.