Efficient and low cost multiple optical trap, based on interference

Interference fringes provide the means for simultaneous, multiple–micromanipulation, of particles. In biomedical investigations, multiple interference optical trapping gives the feasibility to trap a large number of biological substances. In this paper we describe a simple method for creating multiple optical tweezers from a single laser beam, using a system of ten transparent glass beam splitters. The experimental set up was tested, on polystyrene beads of intermediate size. We also measured the optical forces exerted by the fringes, in positions where the three and two dimensions optical trap was stable, and we evaluated the experimentally obtained optical efficiency. We notice that the experimentally optical efficiency value for the higher order fringes decreases.