Applications of Phase and Amplitude Spatial Light Modulators

Abstract

Spatial light modulators (SLM) have been widely adopted for applications such as optical data storage, optical tweezers, laser beam shaping including generation and detection of Optical Angular Momentum. In this thesis, we experimentally demonstrate two applications of Liquid Crystal (LC) SLM for eigenmode multiplexing for holographic data storage, and fast binary modulation by using MEMS and amplitude based SLM. In the holographic data storage system (HDSS) research, we successfully achieved nine holograms recording with angular multiplexing and eigenmode multiplexing methods using projector hacked low-cost SLM. In DMD (digital micromirror device) beam scanning, we realized beam scanning with single DMD binary amplitude holography and phase holography. With the phase modulator, total efficiency of the system reaches around 16% and is expected to be 32% with light recycling method. In the last part of the thesis, we also introduce our work on repurposing a commercial video projector as a ?? phase-only SLM for our research. Phase modulation accuracy was tested with a Linnik microscope interferometer. Detailed modification procedures are given at the end of the thesis for future application of the projector hacked SLMs.