text: A typical setup uses one laser to create one or two traps. Commonly, two traps are generated by splitting the laser beam into two orthogonally polarized beams. Optical tweezing operations with more than two traps can be realized either by time-sharing a single laser beam among several optical tweezers, or by diffractively splitting the beam into multiple traps. With acousto-optic deflectors or galvanometer-driven mirrors, a single laser beam can be shared among hundreds of optical tweezers in the focal plane, or else spread into an extended one-dimensional trap. Specially designed diffractive optical elements can divide a single input beam into hundreds of continuously illuminated traps in arbitrary three-dimensional configurations. The trap-forming hologram also can specify the mode structure of each trap individually, thereby creating arrays of optical vortices, optical tweezers, and holographic line traps, for example. When implemented with a spatial light modulator, such holographic optical traps also can move objects in three dimensions. Advanced forms of holographic optical traps with arbitrary spatial profiles, where smoothness of the intensity and the phase are controlled, find applications in many areas of science, from micromanipulation to ultracold atoms.
  Ultracold atoms could also be used for realization of quantum computers.