Complex-valued holograms displayed onto phase-only spatial light modulators: encoding technique and evaluation

Abstract

This communication presents the realization of complex-valued Fourier transform (FT) holograms displayed onto phaseonly liquid-crystal spatial light modulators (LC-SLM). Different encoding techniques are described, and the advantages are discussed in relation to the SLM modulation characteristics and other related effects like flicker or fringing. Finally, an experimental technique for evaluating the quality of the reconstruction will be introduced, which uses the SLM itself to build a polarization phase-shift self-interferometer useful to measure the complex distribution generated in the far field domain.