a line of tweezers which lift the cell along the perimeter on one side the resulting rotation allows a 360 degree view of the cell in addition to the advantage for viewing of biological samples there also exists the ability to orient samples stably which has clear benefit for studies such as scattering experiments which have a strong dependence on orientation of the sample because of the large number of sperm in a typical bovine ejaculate and the small amount of time available before the sperm becomes no longer functional a large number of sperm per second on the order of a million are sorted for a commercially viable sperm sorter sorting with holographic optical traps confers enormous advantage through its ability to process in parallel a large number of cells the technology for using lasers to access a large number of sites quickly already exists in the form of a spinning laser disc cd player or dvd player these devices combine rotational motion of the disc with radial motion of the laser to access sites with incredibly high speeds for example the typical dvd player may access approximately 4 billion separate u201c bits u201d on the disc in about two hours combining this spinning disc approach with optical trapping see fig8 allows access to cells at similar rates and holographic optical trapping increases these rates by factors of 100 or even higher as shown in fig8 objects or cells are introduced at the sample intake 700 and using an appropriate sample delivery system 701 the cells are provided to the sample distribution disc 702 which is rotated by a motor control the imaging and trapping system 703 which is connected to a control and analysis system 704 sorts the cells.