by offering high speed cycling through large numbers of diffractive optical elements film based implementations of holographic optical traps will have applications beyond optical peristalsis optical peristalsis also can be useful for particles and other materials such as biological cells which are larger than the physical separation between the traps in an optical peristalsis pattern similarly materials such as proteins dna or molecules could also be manipulated using optical peristalsis a large object trapped on a u201c bed of nails u201d optical trapping pattern still can be moved by translating the bed of nails rather than defining a single trapping region however an optical peristalsis pattern can establish a large field of traps suitable for immobilizing a large object wherever it is found updating the pattern with small displacements as described above then will displace the entire object potential applications include translating an extended sample into a region where it can undergo tests rotating the object for examination or controllably deforming the object for example in the embodiment of fig1 the manifolds 20 of included optical traps are shown trapping an extended object 80 updating the pattern with the manifolds 20 will tend to rotate the extended object 80 similarly fig1 shows the manifolds 20 of optical traps trapping an extended deformable object 82 the object 82 is more strongly trapped by denser regions of traps and moving these regions outward in subsequent patterns tends to stretch the object 82 each optical peristalsis sequence performs one specific operation in some applications it can be desirable to perform a series of optical peristalsis operations with the order of the series perhaps.