Excitation strategies for optical lattice microscopy

Recently, new classes of optical lattices were identified, permitting the creation of arbitrarily large two- and three-dimensional arrays of tightly confined excitation maxima of controllable periodicity and polarization from the superposition of a finite set of plane waves. Here, experimental methods for the generation of such lattices are considered theoretically in light of their potential applications, including high resolution dynamic live cell imaging, photonic crystal fabrication, and quantum simulation and quantum computation using ultracold atoms. (C) 2005 Optical Society of America.