Dynamic holographic optical bottles for selective manipulation and merging of multiple absorbing particles

Absorbing particles have attracted wide interest in multifarious fields due to their strong light absorption characteristics, which can be trapped by optical bottles (OBs), three-dimensional dark regions surrounded by light. Existing OB-based particle manipulation is typically limited to a single functionality, such as the stationary volume or the single manipulated object. This severely limits the versatility and selectivity of micro-manipulation, particularly in the multi-particle system. In this paper, we address these challenges by introducing a dynamic OBs generation method. By modulating optical vortices and multi-parabolic trajectory phases, a series of OBs with targeted positions, numbers, and states is encoded as a battery of holograms, which are imported into the spatial light modulator (SLM). Experimentally, by dynamically reconfiguring the corresponding holograms in the SLM, we validate selectively switching and moving OBs for dynamic particle manipulation. Consequently, a specific fraction of targeted particles can be selectively released, transported 7.2 mm away while the others remain trapped in place, or merged from two 3.5-mm-spaced OBs into a larger single entity. Our results deepen the applications of OB beams and may herald a new avenue for dynamic particle manipulation.