Arbitrary manipulation of spatial amplitude and phase using phase-only spatial light modulators

Abstract

Spatial structure of a light beam is an important degree of freedom to be extensively explored. By designing simple configurations with phase-only spatial light modulators (SLMs), we show the ability to arbitrarily manipulate the spatial full field information (i.e. amplitude and phase) of a light beam. Using this approach to facilitating arbitrary and independent control of spatial amplitude and phase, one can flexibly generate different special kinds of light beams for different specific applications. Multiple collinear orbital angular momentum (OAM) beams, Laguerre-Gaussian (LG) beams, and Bessel beams, having both spatial amplitude and phase distributions, are successfully generated in the experiments. Some arbitrary beams with odd-shaped intensity are also generated in the experiments.