Optical microparticle manipulation advances and new capabilities offered by diffractive optics

The review deals with a promising area in laser optics - optical manipulation. The object under manipulation can be of various nature: from a colloid particle to a molecule, from cell, virus, to a micromechanism part, etc. In the first part of this work a concise review of the articles on optical manipulation of microparticles and atoms published in the last two decades is presented. The second part is devoted t the production of laser beams with self-reproduction properties. Such beams can be most effectively produced using diffractive optical elements (DOEs). The DOE-generated self-reproducing laser beams (stable, axially periodic, rotating, and multiorder) offer new opportunities in optical manipulation of micro- and nano-objects