Method to measure the phase modulation characteristics of a liquid crystal spatial light modulator

Abstract

The universal liquid crystal spatial light modulator (LC-SLM) is widely used in many aspects of optical studies. The working principles and applications of LC-SLM were introduced briefly. The traditional Twyman-Green interference method, which was used to measure the phase modulation characteristics of a liquid spatial light modulator, had some obvious disadvantages in practice. To avoid these issues, the traditional Twyman-Green interference method was improved. Also, a new method to process interference fringes and measure the shift distances and cycles automatically by computers was proposed. The phase modulation characteristics of P512-1064 LC-SLM produced by the Meadowlark Company were measured to verify the validity of the newly proposed method. In addition, in order to compensate and correct the nonlinear characteristics of the phase modulation curve, three universal inverse interpolation methods were utilized. The root mean squared error and residual sum of squares between the calibrated phase modulation curve and the ideal phase modulation curve were reduced obviously by taking advantage of the inverse interpolation methods. Subsequently, the method of shape-preserving subsection cubic interpolation had acquired the best performance with high computation efficiency. Experiments have been performed to verify the validity of the interpolation method. The experimental results showed that the phase modulation characteristics of LC-LSM could be acquired and calibrated automatically with convenience and high efficiency by utilizing the newly proposed processing method.