A low-cost spatial light modulator for use in undergraduate and graduate optics labs

Huang, Derek Yunchih; Timmers, Henry; Roberts, Arthur G.; Shivaram, Niranjan; Sandhu, Arvinder

doi:10.1119/1.3666834

Cited by 43 publications

(23 citation statements)

References 21 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Unclassified

Order By: Relevance

“…SLMs are at the core of some types of classroom projectors, so they can in principle be removed from the projector, programmed and used. 40 We used a low-cost (∼$1,200) commercial spatial light modulator from Cambridge Correlators. Since it has 8-bit resolution, we created images in gray scale.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The latter have been used recently for undergraduate experiments. 39,40 One of the beams generated by the SLM was in a Laguerre-Gauss (LG) mode, a spatial mode of light with interesting optical properties, 41 which can be used as a topic of experimentation in the undergraduate laboratory on its own right. 40,[42][43][44] This combination of components gives rise to an experiment rich in optics and polarization.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

The Poincaré-sphere approach to polarization: Formalism and new labs with Poincaré beams

Jones¹,

D'Addario²,

Rojec³

et al. 2016

American Journal of Physics

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

We present a geometric-analytic introductory treatment of polarization based on the circular polarization basis, which connects directly to the Poincaré sphere. This enables a more intuitive way to arrive at the polarization ellipse from the components of the field. We also present an advanced optics lab that uses Poincaré beams, which have a polarization that is spatially variable. The physics of this lab reinforces students' understanding of all states of polarization, and in particular, elliptical polarization. In addition, it exposes them to Laguerre-Gauss modes, the spatial modes used in creating Poincaré beams, which have unique physical properties. In performing this lab, students gain experience in experimental optics, such as aligning and calibrating optical components, using and programming a spatial light modulator, building an interferometer, and performing polarimetry measurements. We present the apparatus for doing the experiments, detailed alignment instructions and lower-cost alternatives.

show abstract

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Poincaré-sphere approach to polarization: Formalism and new labs with Poincaré beams

Jones¹,

D'Addario²,

Rojec³

et al. 2016

American Journal of Physics

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…In particular we review the known approaches for creating arbitrary optical modes by complex amplitude modulation on phase-only spatial light modulators, and provide some examples of the power of this technique. For more information on liquid crystal spatial light modulators the reader is referred to previous review and tutorial articles [8][9][10]. Consider the transformation of FIGURE 2.…”

Section: Structured Light With Digital Hologramsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Such devices (see Fig. 1) have been extensively reviewed in the context of tutorials on getting started [8][9][10] as well as their various applications. The ease of use of such devices has spurned many new applications for real-time structured light, for example, holographic optical trapping and tweezing [11], quantum information processing [12], mode division multiplexling [13], microscopy [14], 3D holographic imaging and metrology [15][16][17] and even in lasers [18].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Creation and detection of optical modes with spatial light modulators

2016

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Modal decomposition of light has been known for a long time, applied mostly to pattern recognition. With the commercialization of liquid crystal devices, digital holography as an enabling tool has become accessible to all, and with it all-digital tools for the decomposition of light has finally come of age. We review recent advances in unravelling the properties of light, from the modal structure of laser beams, to decoding the information stored in orbital angular momentum carrying fields. We show application of these tools to fibre lasers, solid-state lasers and structured light created in the laboratory by holographic laser beam shaping. We show by experimental implementation how digital holograms may be used to infer the intensity, phase, wavefront, Poynting vector, polarization and orbital angular momentum density of some unknown optical field. In particular, we outline how virtually all the previous ISO-standard beam diagnostic techniques may be readily replaced with all-digital equivalents, thus paving the way for unravelling of light in real-time. Such tools are highly relevant to the in situ analysis of laser systems, to mode division multiplexing as an emerging tool in optical communication, and for quantum information processing with entangled photons.

show abstract

“…Pixelated arrays represent a flexible and cost-effective approach [8] to spatially modulate a light distribution for multiple applications.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Confocal imaging capacity on a widefield microscope using a spatial light modulator

Wang

Grooms

Civale

et al. 2020

Preprint

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Confocal microscopes can reject out-of-focus and scattered light; however, widefield microscopes are far more common in biological laboratories due to their accessibility and lower cost. We report confocal imaging capacity on a widefield microscope by adding a spatial light modulator (SLM) and utilizing custom illumination and acquisition methods. We discuss our illumination strategy and compare several procedures for postprocessing the acquired image data. We assessed the performance of this system for rejecting out-of-focus light by comparing images taken using our widefield microscope, our SLM-enhanced setup, and a commercial confocal microscope. The optical sectioning capability, assessed on thin fluorescent film, was 0.85 ± 0.04 μm for our SLM-enhanced setup and 0.68 ± 0.04 μm for a confocal microscope, while a widefield microscope exhibited no sectioning capability. We demonstrate our setup by imaging the same set of neurons in C. elegans on widefield, SLM, and confocal microscopes. SLM enhancement greatly reduces background from the cell body, allowing visualization of dim fibers nearby. Our SLM-enhanced setup identified 93% of the dim neuronal fibers seen in confocal images while a widefield microscope only identified 48% of the same fibers. Our microscope add-on represents a very simple (2-component) and inexpensive (<$600) approach to enable widefield microscopes to optically section thick samples.

show abstract

A low-cost spatial light modulator for use in undergraduate and graduate optics labs

Cited by 43 publications

References 21 publications

The Poincaré-sphere approach to polarization: Formalism and new labs with Poincaré beams

The Poincaré-sphere approach to polarization: Formalism and new labs with Poincaré beams

Creation and detection of optical modes with spatial light modulators

Confocal imaging capacity on a widefield microscope using a spatial light modulator

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About