Frozen waves (FWs) are very interesting particular cases of nondiffracting beams whose envelopes are static and whose longitudinal intensity patterns can be chosen a priori. We present here for the first time (that we know of) the experimental generation of FWs. The experimental realization of these FWs was obtained using a holographic setup for the optical reconstruction of computer generated holograms (CGH), based on a $4\text{-}f$ Fourier filtering system and a nematic liquid crystal spatial light modulator (LC-SLM), where FW CGHs were first computationally implemented, and later electronically implemented, on the LC-SLM for optical reconstruction. The experimental results are in agreement with the corresponding theoretical analytical solutions and hold excellent prospects for implementation in scientific and technological applications.

We report, to the best of our knowledge, the first optical trapping experimental demonstration of microparticles with frozen waves. Frozen waves are an efficient method to model longitudinally the intensity of nondiffracting beams obtained by superposing copropagating Bessel beams with the same frequency and order. Based on this, we investigate the optical force distribution acting on microparticles of two types of frozen waves. The experimental setup of holographic optical tweezers using a spatial light modulator has been assembled and optimized. The results show that it is possible to obtain greater stability for optical trapping using frozen waves. The significant enhancement in trapping geometry from this approach shows promising applications for optical tweezers micromanipulations over a broad range.

In recent times, we experimentally realized quite an efficient modeling of the shape of diffraction-resistant optical beams, thus generating for the first time the so-called frozen waves (FW), whose longitudinal intensity pattern can be arbitrarily chosen within a prefixed space interval of the propagation axis. In this Letter, we extend our theory of FWs, which led to beams endowed with a static envelope, through a dynamic modeling of the FWs whose shape is now allowed to evolve in time in a predetermined way. Further, we experimentally create such dynamic FWs (DFWs) in optics via a computational holographic technique and a spatial light modulator. Experimental results are presented here for two cases of DFWs, one of zeroth order and the other of higher order, the latter being the most interesting exhibiting a cylindrical surface of light whose geometry changes in space and time.