Abstract

Spatial light modulators are often used to implement phase modulation. Since they are pixelated, the phase function is usually approximated by a regularly sampled piecewise constant function, and the periodicity of the pixel sampling generates annoying diffraction peaks. We theoretically investigate two pixelation techniques: the isophase method and a new nonperiodic method derived from the Voronoi tessellation technique. We show that, for a suitable choice of parameters, the diffraction peaks disappear and are replaced by a smoothly varying halo. We illustrate the potential of these two techniques for implementing a lens function and wavefront correction.

© 2011 Optical Society of America

Minimization of diffraction peaks of spatial light modulators using Voronoi diagrams

Céline Benoît-Pasanau, François Goudail, Pierre Chavel, Jean-Paul Cano, and Jérôme Ballet
Opt. Express 18(14) 15223-15235 (2010)

Diffractive optical elements designed for highly precise far-field generation in the presence of artifacts typical for pixelated spatial light modulators

Gabriel Milewski, David Engström, and Jörgen Bengtsson
Appl. Opt. 46(1) 95-105 (2007)

Efficient implementation of a spatial light modulator as a diffractive optical microlens array in a digital Shack-Hartmann wavefront sensor

Liping Zhao, Nan Bai, Xiang Li, Lin Seng Ong, Zhong Ping Fang, and Anand Krishna Asundi
Appl. Opt. 45(1) 90-94 (2006)

Phase mapping and wavefront analysis based on multi-illumination light fields generated by a spatial light modulator

Alexandre Mazine and Kevin Heggarty
Appl. Opt. 50(17) 2679-2691 (2011)

Diffraction-based determination of the phase modulation for general spatial light modulators

David Engström, Gabriel Milewski, Jörgen Bengtsson, and Sheila Galt
Appl. Opt. 45(28) 7195-7204 (2006)