Grating beam splitting with liquid crystal adaptive optics

Abstract

We report on the generation of equi-intense light beams from an adaptive point of view. A phase mask is generated and displayed onto a spatial light modulator, in order to divide an incoming light beam into a chosen number of beams. The use of liquid crystal spatial light modulators can introduce polarization into scalar designs as a parameter acting on the output efficiency. We reproduce the modulator optimal designs proposed theoretically in the literature and we add the polarization features. In addition, we compare this with another beam splitting technique, based on spatial multiplexing of phase masks. It spreads as low-level background noise the light concentrated on diffraction orders other than those targeted. We also demonstrate that using polarization with spatial light modulators can improve in some cases the optimal theoretical efficiencies. Experimental results agree with simulations.